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. 2011 Feb;49(2):722-4.
doi: 10.1128/JCM.01988-10. Epub 2010 Dec 15.

High proportion of wrongly identified methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus carriers by use of a rapid commercial PCR assay due to presence of staphylococcal cassette chromosome element lacking the mecA gene

Dominique S Blanc  1 , Patrick Basset, Immaculée Nahimana-Tessemo, Katia Jaton, Gilbert Greub, Giorgio Zanetti
Affiliations

High proportion of wrongly identified methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus carriers by use of a rapid commercial PCR assay due to presence of staphylococcal cassette chromosome element lacking the mecA gene

Dominique S Blanc et al. J Clin Microbiol. 2011 Feb.

Abstract

During a 9-month period, 217 patients were newly diagnosed as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) carriers by using a commercial rapid PCR-based test (GeneXpert). However, no MRSA was recovered by culturing the second swab in 61 of these patients. Further analyses showed that 28 (12.9%) of the patients harbored S. aureus isolates with a staphylococcal cassette chromosome element lacking the mecA gene and were thus incorrectly determined to be MRSA carriers.

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References

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