The Multiple Paths to Heteroresistance and Intermediate Resistance to Vancomycin in Staphylococcus aureus

The multiple paths to heteroresistance and intermediate resistance to vancomycin in Staphylococcus aureus.

A comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms by which Staphylococcus aureus achieves intermediate levels of resistance to vancomycin could foster the development of improved diagnostic tests and therapeutic agents, with potentially improved clinical outcomes. Vidaillac et al, in this issue of the Journal [1], used well-characterized successive S. aureus clinical isolates that had acquired se...

Vancomycin heteroresistance and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.

Heteroresistance refers to the presence, within a larger population of fully antimicrobial-susceptible microorganisms, of subpopulations with lesser susceptibility. This phenomenon has been described in a wide range of microorganisms, but much recent attention has been directed toward its expression in Staphylococcus aureus. Although it has long been known that resistance to methicillin is char...

Vancomycin Resistance in Staphylococcus aureus Strains

Reduced sensitivity of staphylococcus aureus to vancomycin

Introduction: Staphylococcus aureus is one of the most common causes of infections in hospitals and vancomycin is used for the treatment of methicillin resistant S, aureus infections. Therefore, imergence of Staphylococcus aureus with reduced sensitivity to vancomycin is a serious problem. The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence of Staphylococcus aureus with reduced suscep...

Contribution of vraSR and graSR point mutations to vancomycin resistance in vancomycin-intermediate Staphylococcus aureus.

We describe here the genetic analysis of a vancomycin-susceptible Staphylococcus aureus (VSSA) strain, Mu50Omega, a strain related to vancomycin-intermediate S. aureus (VISA) strain Mu50. Using a combination of Mu50Omega whole-genome sequencing and genome engineering, we observed a stepwise evolution of vancomycin resistance from VSSA to VISA after the mutated vraS and graR genes of Mu50 were e...