We conducted a study among a group of 26 regional pig farmers to determine the methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus prevalence rate and found it was >760 times greater than the rate of patients admitted to Dutch hospitals. While spa-type t108 is apparently a more widespread clone among pig farmers and their environment, we did find other spa-types.

We demonstrate how the surrogate process approximation (SPA) method can be used to compute both the potential of mean force along a reaction coordinate and the associated diffusion coefficient using a relatively small number (10-20) of bidirectional nonequilibrium trajectories coming from a complex system. Our method provides confidence bands which take the variability of the initial configurat...

Staphylococcal food poisoning outbreaks (SFPOs) are frequently reported in France. However, most of them remain unconfirmed, highlighting a need for a better characterization of isolated strains. Here we analyzed the genetic diversity of 112 Staphylococcus aureus strains isolated from 76 distinct SFPOs that occurred in France over the last 30 years. We used a recently developed multiple-locus v...

Background The changing epidemiology of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) from a hospital-associated pathogen to an organism commonly found in the community and in livestock reflects an organism well-equipped to survive in diverse environments and adjust to different environmental conditions including antimicrobial use. Methods We investigated the molecular epidemiology of S....

BACKGROUND Various virulence factors and superantigens are encoded by mobile genetic elements. The relationship between clonal background and virulence factors differs in different geographic regions. We compared the distribution and relationship of spa types and virulence genes among methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) strains isolated from a tertiary hospital in 2000-01 and 200...

results a number of 7-11 repeats in the spa gene xr region were determined. strains with 10 repeats were65%, therefore they had the highest percentage in isolates. seven repeats strains were 20% and each of the strains with 8, 9 and 11 repeats had the frequency of 5%. s. aureus strains antibiotic resistance was 35%, 5%, 45% and 40% for tetracycline, amoxicillin, gentamicin and erythromycin resp...

Ileocolonoscopic evidence for subclinical gut inflammation is found in a subpopulation of spondyloarthropathy (SpA) patients. The prevalence of microscopic intestinal lesions is even higher and can be classified as either an acute or a chronic type of inflammation. The latter condition is associated with an increased risk of developing overt inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), especially Crohn’s ...

Bacterial pathogens such as Staphylococcus aureus undergo major physiological changes when they infect their hosts, requiring the coordinated regulation of gene expression in response to the stresses encountered. Several environmental factors modify the expression of S. aureus virulence genes. This report shows that the expression of spa (virulence gene encoding the cell-wall-associated protein...

The paper examines face-to-face interaction in a simple two-person bargaining game with incomplete information about the division of a fixed sum of money in which each bargainer can either have costs to be subtracted from her bargaining agreement payoff or not. The bargaining events are observed by onlookers who make guesses of the cost situations of the participants. The work of Gauthier (1978...

BACKGROUND Staphylococcus aureus is a common bacterium usually found on skin and mucous membranes of warm blooded animals. Resistance in S. aureus has been increasingly reported though depending on the clonal lineage. Indeed, while hospital acquired (HA)-methicillin resistant S. aureus (MRSA) are typically multi-resistant, community associated (CA)-MRSA are by large more susceptible to many ant...