RESEARCH ARTICLE


PCR-based Approaches for the Detection of Clinical Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus



Ying Liu1, 2, Jiang Zhang1, Yinduo Ji2, *
1 Shanghai Vocational College of Agriculture and Forestry, Shanghai, China
2 Department of Veterinary Biomedical Science, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Minnesota, Saint Paul, United States


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Creative Commons License
© Liu et al.; Licensee Bentham Open.

open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International Public License (CC BY-NC 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/legalcode), which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the Department of Veterinary Biomedical Science, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Minnesota, 1971 Commonwealth Ave. St. Paul, MN 55108, United States; Tel: 612-624-2757; Fax: 612-625-5203; E-mail: jixxx002@umn.edu


Abstract

Staphylococcus aureus is an important pathogen that can cause a variety of infections, including superficial and systematic infections, in humans and animals. The persistent emergence of multidrug resistant S. aureus, particularly methicillin-resistant S. aureus, has caused dramatically economic burden and concerns in the public health due to limited options of treatment of MRSA infections. In order to make a correct choice of treatment for physicians and understand the prevalence of MRSA, it is extremely critical to precisely and timely diagnose the pathogen that induces a specific infection of patients and to reveal the antibiotic resistant profile of the pathogen. In this review, we outlined different PCR-based approaches that have been successfully utilized for the rapid detection of S. aureus, including MRSA and MSSA, directly from various clinical specimens. The sensitivity and specificity of detections were pointed out. Both advantages and disadvantages of listed approaches were discussed. Importantly, an alternative approach is necessary to further confirm the detection results from the molecular diagnostic assays.

Keywords: S. aureus, MRSA, MSSA, diagnosis PCR, multiplex PCR, real-time PCR.