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. 2025 Jun 3;7(6):000918.v4.
doi: 10.1099/acmi.0.000918.v4. eCollection 2025.

Culture harder: use more specimens to increase methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus culture yield relative to PCR

Arvette E Mitchell  1 , Arpit P Patel  1 , Jennifer DiCandilo  1 , Zachary W Rebollido  2 , Matthew A Pettengill  1
Affiliations

Culture harder: use more specimens to increase methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus culture yield relative to PCR

Arvette E Mitchell et al. Access Microbiol. .

Erratum in

Abstract

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) causes considerable morbidity and mortality in both community-acquired and healthcare-associated infections, but detecting colonization with MRSA has been shown to improve patient outcomes in certain clinical settings. MRSA colonization detection has been carried out in a variety of ways, with molecular assays having superior sensitivity in most studies relative to culture, but culture is disadvantaged in some comparisons by utilization of low specimen volumes. We compared a commercial molecular assay to both low-volume (10 µl) and high-volume (650 µl) cultures and found that increasing the volume utilized for culture led to the detection of 25% more cases than low-volume culture.

Keywords: PCR; culture; methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) screening.

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Conflict of interest statement

M.P. has received research funds from Cepheid, Inc., and no other authors have any relevant conflicts of interest to declare.

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