Bacteriophage typing of methicillin sensitive Staphylococcus aureus (MSSA) strains recovered from human clinical cases in Himachal Pradesh and their in vitro susceptibility to different antibiotics

The present study aims at bacteriophage typing of methicillin sensitive Staphylococcus aureus (MSSA) strains recovered from patients with different clinical conditions at Indira Gandhi Medical College, Shimla Himachal Pradesh. We have previously reported the emergence of such resistance among 66% S. aureus strains of Himachal Pradesh. Of these 42 MSSA strains were submitted at National Centre for bacteriophage typing, Maulana Azad Medical College, Delhi. 20 strains (54.05%) were typable and 17 (45.94%) were non-typable by the available typing tools. The strains were assigned to group I (45%), group II and group III 10(% each), group NA (20%) and mixed phage group (15%). None of the MSSA strain was lyses by the phages of group V. Phage type 52 and 79 were the most predominant which lyses 9 MSSA strains followed by phage type 81 (5 strains), phage type 84, type 80 and 29 (4 strains each), type 47 (2 strains), 55 (2 strains).