title: Emerging resistance in clinically important gram-positive cocci.
abstract: In the first half of the decade of the 1990s, we in the United States have seen the emergence and escalation of substantial antimicrobial resistance in medically important gram-positive cocci. The incidence of methicillin resistance of Staphylococcus aureus continues to increase (now 18%), resulting in many more isolates that are multiply resistant; all S aureus isolates are still susceptible to vancomycin. Enterococci, particularly Enterococcus faecium, have increasingly developed resistance to penicillin, gentamicin, streptomycin, and vancomycin (the last plasmid-mediated). More than a fourth of Streptococcus pneumoniae strains are now resistant to penicillin, and these strains tend to be multiply resistant, including to cephalosporins and macrolides.
authors.affiliation: MRL Pharmaceutical Services, Franklin, TN 37064, USA.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Thornsberry
mesh_terms: D004352:Drug Resistance, Microbial; D016983:Enterococcus / Q000187:drug effects; D006095:Gram-Positive Cocci / Q000187:drug effects*; D006801:Humans; D013210:Staphylococcus / Q000187:drug effects; D013296:Streptococcus pneumoniae / Q000187:drug effects