Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis typing of oxacillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus isolates from the United States: Establishing a national database

Oxacillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (ORSA) is a virulent pathogen responsible for both health care-associated and community onset disease. We used SmaI-digested genomic DNA separated by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) to characterize 957 S. aureus isolates and establish a database of PFGE patterns. In addition to PFGE patterns of U.S. strains, the database contains patterns of representative epidemic-type strains from the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia; previously described ORSA clonal-type isolates; 13 vancomycin-intermediate S. aureus (VISA) isolates, and two high-level vancomycin-resistant, vanA-positive strains (VRSA). Among the isolates from the United States, we identified eight lineages, designated as pulsed-field types (PFTs) USA100 through USA800, seven of which included both ORSA and oxacillin-susceptible S. aureus isolates. With the exception of the PFT pairs USA100 and USA800, and USA300 and USA500, each of the PFTs had a unique multilocus sequence type and spa type motif. The USA100 PFT, previously designated as the New York/Tokyo clone, was the most common PFT in the database, representing 44 10 of the ORSA isolates. USA100 isolates were typically multiresistant and included all but one of the U.S. VISA strains and both VRSA isolates. Multiresistant ORSA isolates from the USA200, -500, and -600 PFTs have PFGE patterns similar to those of previously described epidemic strains from Europe and Australia. The USA300 and -400 PFTs contained community isolates resistant only to beta-lactam drugs and erythromycin. Noticeably absent from the U.S. database were isolates with the previously described Brazilian and EMRSA15 PFGE patterns. These data suggest that there are a limited number of ORSA genotypes present in the United States.