Genotypic methods for epidemiological typing of Staphylococcus aureus

Abstract

Staphylococcus aureus is an important pathogen causing both hospital and community-acquired infections. S. aureus strains are often resistant to commonly used antibiotics, thus development of techniques to rapidly identify and genotype is essential in order to control the dissemination of multidrug resistant strains of S. aureus in the environment, which could lead to an epidemic. Typing methods can be divided into those based on phenotypic and those based on genetic characteristics of the examined microorganism. The most reliable genotypic methods in S. aureus epidemiological studies were described. These would include the following: Plasmid Profile Analysis (PPA), Pulsed-Field Gel Electrophoresis (PFGE), Multi-Locus Sequence Typing (MLST), Spa Typing, Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD), Amplified-Fragment Length Polymorphism (AFLP), Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism (RFLP), Multiple-Locus Variable Number Tandem Repeat Analysis (MLVA) and Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS). All of these methods have been compared in terms of their reproducibility, costs, time of analysis, differentiation potential and exemplary applications in epidemiological studies of S. aureus. Despite there being a variety of methods currently used for genotyping, not all of them meet the criteria set by different kinds of epidemiological investigations. Because of the large amount of generated data and decrease of costs, the most popular methods used for S. aureus genotyping are based on sequencing techniques.