MRSA in Austria—an overview

Abstract

The aim of this study was to provide an overview of predominant and sporadic methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) strains in large regions of Austria, and to compare the results with those from other European countries. In total, 1439 MRSA isolates, collected routinely between January 1996 and June 2006 from five Austrian federal provinces, were investigated. The isolates were confirmed as MRSA using mecA/femA multiplex PCR assays. Genes encoding Panton-Valentine leukocidin (PVL), which are characteristic of community-acquired MRSA, were also detected by PCR. Subtyping was performed using SmaI macrorestriction digestion of genomic DNA, followed by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) and cluster analysis. Isolates that could not be assigned to clusters were further analysed by spa typing and/or multilocus sequence typing. The predominant clones detected in Austria were ST228 (southern German epidemic clone), ST5 (Rhine-Hessen MRSA), the ST8 Austrian clone and CC8/ST8. Whereas the frequencies of lineages corresponding to ST247, ST45 and ST22 remained comparably low, an increase in the frequency of lineages corresponding to ST5 and to ST228 was recorded. Overall, 20 different MRSA types and 321 subtypes were recognised according to PFGE analysis. The prevalence of different strains varied considerably in the different Austrian regions. When compared to other European countries, the situation in Austria was most similar to that found in Germany.

Methicillin-ResistantStaphylococcus aureusST398 from Human Patients, Upper Austria

“…For quality control, all isolates were cultured and investigated for mecA/femA by PCR at the Austrian National Reference Centre (3). Of the 1,210 isolates, 1,098 (90.7%) were confi rmed to be MRSA; the other 112 (9.3%) were either methicillin-sensitive S. aureus or were not S. aureus and therefore were excluded from the MRSA registry.…”

Trends in the occurrence of MRSA strains in Upper Austria from 2006 to 2009

“…All isolates were cultured and analysed as described [2,3]. Briefly, DNA was isolated and PCR was used to detect the presence of mecA and femA as well as the PVL genes lukSlukF.…”

“…MRSA-ST398 is characterized by its resistance to tetracycline, one of the main antibiotics used in pig farming. Moreover, an unusual resistance phenotype showing clindamycin resistance but erythromycin susceptibility has been reported in a few MRSA-ST398 isolates [2][3][4][5]. Recently, this phenotype has been associated in some strains with the presence of plasmid-borne resistance genes vga(A) or vga(C) [6].…”

Antibiotic resistance in primary care in Austria - a systematic review of scientific and grey literature

“…Six articles show the resistance pattern of E. coli , ESBL-producing E. coli and other bacteria related to community-acquired uncomplicated urinary tract infections [24,26,28-31], eight the resistance pattern of the bacteria included for community-acquired respiratory tract infections [21-23,25,27,32-34], further two are dealing with the MRSA situation in Austria [35,36] and one article is a "letter to the editor" with an overview of multiple bacteria [37]. No overall conclusion of the current resistance situation in the ambulatory sector in Austria can be gathered out of these different studies due to the differences in sampling settings, inclusion and exclusion criteria of the study population, time periods, bacteria analysed and the methodology used.…”