JCM Accepts, published online ahead of print on 1 October 2008

This Article Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Reprints and Permissions Copyright Information Books from ASM Press MicrobeWorld Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Jamaluddin, T. Z. M. T. Articles by Hiramatsu, K. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Jamaluddin, T. Z. M. T. Articles by Hiramatsu, K.

 Previous Article  |  Next Article 

J. Clin. Microbiol. doi:10.1128/JCM.02262-07
Copyright (c) 2008, American Society for Microbiology and/or the Listed Authors/Institutions. All Rights Reserved.

Extreme genetic diversity of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus epidermidis (MRSE) disseminated among healthy Japanese children

Tengku Zetty Maztura Tengku Jamaluddin, Kyoko Kuwahara-Arai, Ken Hisata, Masahiko Terasawa, Longzhu Cui, Tadashi Baba, Chie Sotozono, Shigeru Kinoshita, Teruyo Ito, and Keiichi Hiramatsu^*

Department of Infection Control Science, Department of Bacteriology, Department of Paediatrics, Juntendo University School of Medicine, Terasawa Children's Clinic, Sendai-city, Miyagi, Department of Ophthalmology, Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine, Kyoto, Japan

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: khiram06{at}med.juntendo.ac.jp.

For the past few years, we have been observing the dissemination of methicillin-resistant staphylococci in the community. In the period of 2001 to 2003, evaluation of nasal samples of 1,285 children of five day-care centers and two kindergartens in three districts in Japan revealed that methicilin-resistant coagulase-negative staphylococci (MRC-NS) have been widely disseminated in the Japanese community. Its prevalence is much greater than community-acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA). Forty nine children (3.81%) were colonized with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), whereas 390 children (30.35%) were colonized with MRC-NS.

These MRC-NS strains predominantly harbored a pair of cassette chromosome recombinases types A2 and B2 (ccrAB2). Of these, 40.8% harbored type IVa SCCmec elements, a distinct/characteristic SCCmec in pandemic clones of CA-MRSA. Interestingly, there was also a high frequency of non-typeable (NT) strains which possessed atypical structures as compared to previous SCCmec types.

Among the MRC-NS, the majority of strains (63.59%) were methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus epidermidis (MRSE). Their genotypes as judged from pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) were highly diverse. It was so diverse that there was no sign of immediate transmission of any MRSE clone among children of the same institutions. In a previous report we expounded that a few CA-MRSA clones with distinct SCCmec types were disseminated among children of the same institutions. Au contraire, with the case of CA-MRSE, there was no single genotype of CA-MRSE disseminated among children even in the same institution or class.