diversity of methicillin-resistant and -susceptible in clinical strains from Malaysia: a high prevalence of invasive European -type t032.

BACKGROUND

is one of the important pathogens causing nosocomial infection. typing allows identification of clones in hospital isolates and is useful for epidemiological studies and nosocomial infection control. This study aims to investigate the types in Malaysian isolates obtained from various clinical specimens.

METHOD

A total of 89 methicillin-resistant (MRSA) [pus ( = 55), blood ( = 27), respiratory ( = 5), eye ( = 2)] isolates and 109 methicillin-susceptible (MSSA) [pus ( = 79), blood ( = 24), respiratory ( = 3), eye ( = 2) and urine ( = 1)] isolates were subjected to typing with sequences analysed using BioNumerics version 7.

RESULTS

The sequence was successfully amplified from 77.8% of the strains (154/198) and 47 known types were detected. The distribution of known types in MRSA (36.2%, 17/47) was less diverse than in MSSA (70.2%, 33/47). The most predominant types were t032 (50%) in MRSA, and t127 (19%) and t091 (16.7%) in MSSA, respectively. type t091 in MSSA was significantly associated with skin and soft tissue infections ( = 0.0199).

CONCLUSION

The previously uncommon type t032 was detected in the Malaysian MRSA strains, which also corresponded to the most common type in Europe and Australia, and has replaced the dominant type t037 which was reported in Malaysia in 2010.