A preliminary guideline for the assignment of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus to a Canadian pulsed-field gel electrophoresis epidemic type using spa typing.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Increasing rates of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections on a global scale is a major health concern. In Canada, there are 10 known epidemic types of MRSA as determined by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). Despite the excellent discriminatory power of PFGE, there are several disadvantages of using this technique, such as high degree of labour intensity and the inability to easily develop an MRSA typing database due to the subjective interpretation of results.

Objectives

The purpose of the present study was to determine whether spa typing, an established DNA sequence-based typing method, could be used as an alternative to PFGE for the typing of Canadian MRSA (CMRSA) epidemic isolates.

Results

spa types were determined for 1488

SUBMITTER: Golding GR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2604773 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature