spa diversity of methicillin-resistant and -susceptible Staphylococcus aureus in clinical strains from Malaysia: a high prevalence of invasive European spa-type t032

Sherry Usun Jones; Kek Heng Chua; Ching Hoong Chew; Chew Chieng Yeo; Fatimah Haslina Abdullah; Norlela Othman; Boon Pin Kee; Suat Moi Puah

doi:10.7717/peerj.11195

spa diversity of methicillin-resistant and -susceptible Staphylococcus aureus in clinical strains from Malaysia: a high prevalence of invasive European spa-type t032

PeerJ. 2021 Apr 8:9:e11195. doi: 10.7717/peerj.11195. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Sherry Usun Jones¹, Kek Heng Chua¹, Ching Hoong Chew², Chew Chieng Yeo³, Fatimah Haslina Abdullah⁴, Norlela Othman⁴, Boon Pin Kee¹, Suat Moi Puah¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Biomedical Science, Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
² Faculty of Health Sciences, Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin, Kuala Nerus, Terengganu, Malaysia.
³ Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin, Kuala Terengganu, Terengganu, Malaysia.
⁴ Department of Pathology, Hospital Sultanah Nur Zahirah, Kuala Terengganu, Terengganu, Malaysia.

Abstract

Background: Staphylococcus aureus is one of the important pathogens causing nosocomial infection. spa typing allows identification of S. aureus clones in hospital isolates and is useful for epidemiological studies and nosocomial infection control. This study aims to investigate the spa types in Malaysian S. aureus isolates obtained from various clinical specimens.

Method: A total of 89 methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) [pus (n = 55), blood (n = 27), respiratory (n = 5), eye (n = 2)] isolates and 109 methicillin-susceptible S. aureus (MSSA) [pus (n = 79), blood (n = 24), respiratory (n = 3), eye (n = 2) and urine (n = 1)] isolates were subjected to spa typing with sequences analysed using BioNumerics version 7.

Results: The spa sequence was successfully amplified from 77.8% of the strains (154/198) and 47 known spa types were detected. The distribution of known spa types in MRSA (36.2%, 17/47) was less diverse than in MSSA (70.2%, 33/47). The most predominant spa types were t032 (50%) in MRSA, and t127 (19%) and t091 (16.7%) in MSSA, respectively. spa type t091 in MSSA was significantly associated with skin and soft tissue infections (p = 0.0199).

Conclusion: The previously uncommon spa type t032 was detected in the Malaysian MRSA strains, which also corresponded to the most common spa type in Europe and Australia, and has replaced the dominant spa type t037 which was reported in Malaysia in 2010.

Keywords: Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus; Methicillin-susceptible Staphylococcus aureus; spa typing; t032.

Grants and funding

This study was supported by Fundamental Research Grant Scheme from the Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education (Grant no: FRGS/1/2019/SKK08/UM/02/5). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.