title: Comparison of four genotyping assays for epidemiological study of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.
abstract: Twenty-six methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus strains were genetically differentiated by interrepeat PCR and the results compared with those of ribotyping, pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) and random amplified polymorphic DNA analysis obtained in a previous study for the same strains. The comparison showed that the PCR-mediated assays were as discriminatory as PFGE, whereas ribotyping was the least powerful genotyping method. Due to the ease of performance, PCR fingerprinting may become the method of choice for establishing clonal relationship among Staphylococcus aureus isolates.
authors.affiliation: University Hospital Dijkzigt, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: van Belkum
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Bax
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Prevost
mesh_terms: D005821:Genetic Techniques; D016106:Methicillin Resistance; D017720:Molecular Epidemiology / Q000379:methods; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction; D013211:Staphylococcus aureus / Q000187:drug effects* / Q000235:genetics*