Fluorescent amplified-fragment length polymorphism analysis of the MRSA epidemic

Abstract

Genotypes and putative genetic relationships were characterised for epidemic methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (EMRSA) strains and isolates from England and Wales, using a high resolution DNA fingerprinting technique, fluorescent amplified-fragment length polymorphism (FAFLP). Each of the phage types of EMRSA had a distinct FAFLP profile. The technique revealed clusters of strains and isolates, and could distinguish isolates belonging to the same phage type. FAFLP provides a new approach to the epidemiological study and control of MRSA.

Subtyping of ST22-MRSA-IV (Barnim epidemic MRSA strain) at a university clinic in Germany from 2002 to 2005

“…Furthermore, the additional PFGE patterns also grouped in different clusters of the fAFLP fingerprints. Thus, the discriminatory power of fAFLP, as demonstrated in other studies (Desai et al, 1998;Grady et al, 1999;Harmsen et al, 2003;Tang et al, 2000), was supported in our study and indeed seemed to be superior to PFGE. However, both methods were not concordant in terms of discerning clusters of related isolates.…”

“…The outlier isolate joined the other clusters with a similarity of 64.7 %. Grady et al (1999) described fAFLP analysis as a potent method for subtyping MRSA for the purpose of hospital infection control. In the present study, we asked whether fAFLP was applicable to the subtyping of the major endemic MRSA of MLST type ST22.…”

Comparison of usefulness of randomly amplified polymorphic DNA and amplified-fragment length polymorphism techniques in epidemiological studies on nasopharyngeal carriage of non-typable Haemophilus influenzae

“…Seven different AFLP sets were used, HindIII/TaqI, two different ApaI/ TaqI sets, HindIII, MfeI/BglII, PstI/TaqI and EcoRI/MseI, based on different enzyme restriction/specific adaptor ligation and primerspecific amplification with/without selective bases complementary to nucleotides flanking the restriction sites. They were previously found to work with species other than H. influenzae (Grady et al, 1999;Huys et al, 1996;Kokotovic et al, 1999;McLauchlin et al, 2000;van Eldere et al, 1999;Vos & Kuiper, 1998). Characteristics of AFLP sets are presented in Table 1.…”

Characterization of Isolates of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus from Hong Kong by Phage Typing, Pulsed-Field Gel Electrophoresis, and Fluorescent Amplified-Fragment Length Polymorphism Analysis

“…These strains were compared with representatives of MRSA clones including the Brazilian (7), Iberian (23), pediatric (HDE288) (22), and New York/ Tokyo (BK2464) (6) clones and epidemic MRSA strains 1 to 16 (eMRSA-1 to -16) from the United Kingdom. FAFLP had been shown to be highly discriminatory against strains of eMRSA-15 (15) and was able to classify eMRSA-1 to -16 from the United Kingdom (13) and European isolates into nine clone clusters (14). Hence, FAFLP may be suitable for surveillance of MRSA epidemics at both the local and international levels.…”