Microbiological evaluation of a new growth-based approach for rapid detection of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.
OBJECTIVE
Recently, a rapid screening tool for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has been introduced that applies a novel detection technology allowing the rapid presence or absence of MRSA to be determined from an enrichment broth after only a few hours of incubation. To evaluate the reliability of this new assay to successfully detect MRSA strains of different origin and clonality, well-characterized S. aureus strains were tested in this study.


METHODS
More than 700 methicillin-susceptible and methicillin-resistant strains covering >90% of all registered European MRSA spa types within the SeqNet network were studied.


RESULTS
All 513 MRSA strains tested were recognized as methicillin-resistant: among these, 96 MRSA strains were from an institutional collection, each presenting a unique spa type. None of the 211 methicillin-susceptible strains were detected as positive.


CONCLUSIONS
The new growth-based rapid MRSA assay was shown to detect without exception all MRSA strains of large collections of strains comprising highly diverse genetic backgrounds, indicating that such a phenotypic test might be potentially more likely to cope with new strains.
von Eiff
Christof
C
Institute of Medical Microbiology, University Hospital of Münster, Domagkstr. 10, 48149 Münster, Germany. eiffc@uni-muenster.de
Maas
Dominik
D
Sander
Gunnar
G
Friedrich
Alexander W
AW
Peters
Georg
G
Becker
Karsten
K
D005838:Genotype; D006801:Humans; D016106:Methicillin Resistance; D008826:Microbial Sensitivity Tests / Q000379:methods*; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D013211:Staphylococcus aureus / Q000187:drug effects* / Q000235:genetics / Q000254:growth & development* / Q000302:isolation & purification; D013997:Time Factors