[Spa types and antibiotic resistance of Staphylococcus aureus bloodstream isolates obtained form patients of the University Clinical Center in Gdańsk].

Introduction: Staphylococcus aureus is a leading cause of bloodstream infections. For epidemiological investigations of this bacteria spa genotyping is used as the method which has a high discriminatory power and gives results that can be easily compared between laboratories. In contrast to methicillin-resistant S.aureus (MRSA), relatively little is known about spa types among methicillin-susceptible strains (MSSA). We used spa typing and antibiotic resistance patterns analysis for retrospective study of S.aureus bloodstream isolates population from the University Clinical Centre (UCC) in Gdańsk.

Methods: The study was performed on 53 isolates from patients of 19 different units/ departments of the UCC. The isolates were tested for the susceptibility to antimicrobial agents. Spa typing was performed on the basis of the sequence analysis of the polymorphic X region of the protein A gene (spa) amplified form the isolates. Spa types were determined by Ridom Staph Type software and were clustered into spa-CCs (clonal complexes) using the algorithm BURP-based upon repeat pattern. MLST (Multilocus Sequence Typing) clonal complexes were predicted from BURP analysis by the Ridom SpaServer database. In MRSA the staphylococcal chromosomal casette (SCC) mec was determined,

Results: Spa-typing yielded 26 types. Six spa-CC and seven singletons were identified. The most frequent was spa-CC021involving 38% of isolates. The CC021 consisted of 7 spa types and the most common was t021 corresponding with MLST-CC30. The second frequent was singleton, related to MLST-CC1, with only one type t127. There were 3 MRSA isolates in the population. The MRSA strains were identified as different spa types: t003/ SCCmecII, t008/SCCmecIV and clonally related to MSSA t032/SCCmecIV. No one MRSA strains belonged to spa-CC021.

Conclusions: The spa clonal cluster corresponding with widely distributed among invasive S.aureus strains in Europe MLST-CC30 was found as the most frequent among S.aureus bloodstream isolates from the UCC. Occurrence of spa types which had a genetic background common to well known MRSA clonal lineages was observed.