A description of staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec) elements carried by 615 methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) strains isolated in 11 Asian countries is reported, and a novel nomenclatural system based on their structures is proposed. The 615 strains were classified as type 3A (370 strains), type 2A (207 strains), type 2B (32 strains), type 1B (1 strain), and nontyp...

Staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec) typing is essential for understanding the molecular epidemiology of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). SCCmec elements are currently classified into types I to V based on the nature of the mec and ccr gene complexes, and are further classified into subtypes according to their junkyard region DNA segments. Previously described trad...

OBJECTIVES The arginine catabolic mobile element (ACME) is a novel staphylococcal genetic island. ACME is located downstream of the staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec), forming the ACME-SCCmec composite island. Recently, ACME II (located upstream of SCCmec IV) was described from a methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) strain M1 in Denmark (ST8-MRSA-IVa) and 15 MRSA isol...

We investigated the nature of the staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec) elements and cognate insertion sites in a collection of 42 clinical staphylococcal isolates of various species from Norway. The ccr and mec genes and the attachment sites (attL/attR) were identified by PCR, Southern blot hybridization, and DNA sequencing. We found 10 possibly new SCCmec types and one previously un...

Five major lineages of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) have evolved since the introduction of methicillin for the treatment of infections caused by penicillin-resistant S. aureus in 1959. The clones of these lineages are responsible for the vast majority of hospital-acquired MRSA disease globally. We have constructed high-resolution evolutionary models for each lineage using ...

Background. The ratio of CA-MRSA in children with impetigo has been increasing in Japan. Methods. Antimicrobial susceptibilities of 136 S. aureus isolates from children with impetigo were studied. Furthermore, molecular epidemiological analysis and virulence gene analysis were performed. Results. Of the 136 S. aureus isolates, 122 (89.7%) were MSSA and 14 (10.3%) were MRSA. Of the 14 MRSA strai...

The aim of this study was to perform SCCmec typing in Staphylococcus aureus isolates and to characterize the clonal profile of these isolates. Forty-six mecA gene-positive strains isolated between 2002 and 2006 were submitted to antimicrobial resistance testing by the E-test, SCCmec typing by multiplex PCR, and clonal profile analysis by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis. Forty-one (89.1%) isola...

Meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is one of the main causes of hospital-acquired infections, but since late 1990s also the community-acquired. For better understanding of the S.aureus epidemiology there is an urgent need for creation of new typing method for SCCmec element. The molecular typing of MRSA for epidemiological purposes is investigated by pulsed-field gel electrophore...

Fluoroquinolone- and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus pseudintermedius isolates harbor two new staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec) elements that belong to class A, allotype 3 (SCCmec II-III), and to the new allotype 5 (SCCmec VII). Analysis of the complete nucleotide sequences of the topoisomerase loci gyrB/gyrA and grlB/grlA revealed mutations involved in fluoroquinolone resist...