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Journal of Clinical Microbiology, April 2000, p. 1347-1351, Vol. 38, No. 4
Vanderbilt University School of Medicine,
Nashville, Tennessee 372321; MIDI Labs,
Inc., Newark, Delaware 197092;
Hewlett-Packard, Palo Alto, California
943043; Mayo Clinic, Rochester,
Minnesota 559054; Perkin-Elmer
Biosystems, Foster City, California 944045; and
Corixa Corporation and the Infectious Disease Research
Institute, Seattle, Washington 981046
Received 1 September 1999/Returned for modification 22 November
1999/Accepted 7 January 2000
The epidemiologic relatedness of methicillin-resistant
Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) isolates is currently
determined by analysis of chromosomal DNA restriction patterns by
pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). We have evaluated an
alternative typing system (MicroSeq StaphTrack Kit; Perkin-Elmer
Biosystems) based on the sequence analysis of the chromosomally encoded
polymorphic repeat X region of the S. aureus protein A
(spa) gene. A total of 69 clinical MRSA isolates were
divided into 18 groups according to the number and nucleotide sequences
of the spa repeats. Molecular typing results obtained both
by spa sequencing and from the PFGE patterns were
concordant except for one group, which contained 20 isolates recovered
over a 2-year period from hospitalized patients at the Mayo Clinic.
Although the spa typing patterns were indistinguishable for
those isolates, PFGE analysis yielded seven related but distinguishable patterns. Further coagulase gene sequence analysis subtyped those 20 strains into four groups which followed distinct temporal and geographic distributions. During a 2-year epidemic period there were up
to 7 fragment changes in PFGE patterns among epidemiologically related
isolates, suggesting that PFGE may be unsuitable for long-term typing
of strains involved in epidemics. Although more limited than PFGE in
discriminatory power, spa sequencing analysis could be used
as a screening method for typing of MRSA strains because of the shorter
turnaround time, ease of use, and the inherent advantages of sequence
analysis, storage, and sharing of information.
0095-1137/00/$04.00+0
Copyright © 2000, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Comparison of Protein A Gene Sequencing with
Pulsed-Field Gel Electrophoresis and Epidemiologic Data for Molecular
Typing of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus
aureus
*
Corresponding author. Mailing address: A3310 MCN,
Division of Infectious Diseases, Vanderbilt University Medical Center,
1161 21st Ave., S., Nashville, TN 37232-2605. Phone: (615) 322-2035. Fax: (615) 343-6160. E-mail: yiwei.tang{at}vanderbilt.edu.
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