Abstract
In 2007 in The Netherlands, 30% of all human isolates of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) sent to the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment could not be typed by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (non-typable (NT)-MRSA). Molecular characterisation of the NT-MRSA isolates revealed 27 different spa types and two distinct SCCmec types, type IV and V. All NT-MRSA isolates were closely related based on spa and multi-locus sequence typing and belonged to the ST398 lineage. The rapid increase of NT-MRSA (ST398) isolates over the last years shows the importance of this relatively new clonal lineage.
Highlights
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is an important pathogen causing infections in the hospital and in the community
In January 2003, the first methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) was found in the Netherlands which could not be typed by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE)
In order to determine whether the 27 different spa types were related to each other, the repeats of each spa type were aligned (Table 2), Table 2 Alignment of tandem repeats* of NT-MRSA spa types, Netherlands, 2007 spa repeats t011 8 16 - 2 25 - - - - - 34 24 25
Summary
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is an important pathogen causing infections in the hospital and in the community. Pig-related MRSA strains can be identified by SmaI pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). These strains possess a methylation enzyme that methylates the SmaI restriction sites. Staphylococcal protein A (spa) typing has shown that the pig-related strains belong to specific spa types, indicating a clonal structure. This clonality was supported by multi-locus sequence typing (MLST), since the pig-related strains were all sequence type (ST) 398 or single locus variants of ST398 (ST752 and ST753) [5]. The pigrelated MRSA has been found in other farm animals such as
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