MRSA Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about MRSA, including details on methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, hospitals, infection, antibiotic resistance, superbugs.

Emergence in Asian countries of Staphylococcus aureus with reduced susceptibility to vancomycin.

Song JH, Hiramatsu K, Suh JY, Ko KS, Ito T, Kapi M, Kiem S, Kim YS, Oh WS, Peck KR, Lee NY,

Division of Infectious Diseases, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, South Korea. jhsong@smc.samsung.co.kr

To investigate the prevalence of Staphylococcus aureus with reduced susceptibility to vancomycin among methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) strains in Asian countries, a total of 1,357 clinical isolates of MRSA collected from 12 Asian countries were screened by using brain heart infusion agar plates containing 4 mg of vancomycin per liter. The presence of strains that were heterointermediately resistant to vancomycin (hVISA) was confirmed by population analysis. Of 347 (25.6%) MRSA isolates that grew on the screening agar plates, 58 isolates (4.3%) were hVISA. hVISA strains were found in India, South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. However, neither vancomycin-intermediate S. aureus nor vancomycin-resistant S. aureus isolates were found among MRSA isolates from Asian countries in this survey.

Published 24 November 2004 in Antimicrob Agents Chemother, 48(12): 4926-8.
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