Abstract:
Staphylococcus aureus has long been recognized as an important
pathogen associated with different types of diseases in humans. The increase
in the frequency of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) as the
causal agent of nosocomial infection and the possibility of emergence of
resistance to vancomycin demands a quick and trustworthy characterization of
isolates and identification of clonal spread within hospitals. In this study 68%
of clinical S. aureus isolates (n=60) collected from Jordan were MRSA.
Molecular typing of those isolates was done through spa typing, pulsed field
gel electrophoresis (PFGE). It was found that each of these typing techniques
had a certain discriminatory power and thus a combination of both would be
essential for proper epidemiological studies aiming at understanding and
controlling the spread of infections specially in the hospital environment. spa
typing showed that spa type t044 was the most common type and represented
28% of the isolates studied and 38% of the MRSA population. PFGE revealed
that isolates having the same spa type do not necessarily have the same
banding patterns. PFGE has shown to have a higher discriminatory power than
spa typing; different PFGE banding patterns were detected for samples of the
different and/or the same spa types.
