Frequent Recovery of a Single Clonal Type of Multidrug-Resistant <i>Staphylococcus aureus</i> from Patients in Two Hospitals in Taiwan and China

<jats:title>ABSTRACT</jats:title> <jats:p> One hundred thirty-two methicillin-resistant <jats:italic>Staphylococcus aureus</jats:italic> (MRSA) isolates recovered from patients with <jats:italic>S. aureus</jats:italic> infections between January 1998 and February 1999 in two hospitals, one located in Taipei, Taiwan, and another in Nanjing, People's Republic of China, were examined for antibiotic susceptibility and for clonal type by a combination of three methods: hybridization of <jats:italic>Cla</jats:italic> I restriction digests with <jats:italic>mecA</jats:italic> - and Tn <jats:italic>554</jats:italic> -specific DNA probes and pulsed-field gel electrophoresis of chromosomal <jats:italic>Sma</jats:italic> I digests. Selected isolates representing each clonal type were also analyzed by <jats:italic>spaA</jats:italic> typing, multilocus sequence typing, and a multiplex PCR method capable of identifying the structural type of the staphylococcal cassette chromosome <jats:italic>mec</jats:italic> (SCC <jats:italic>mec</jats:italic> ) carried by the bacteria. The overwhelming majority of isolates (126 of 132 or 95%) belonged to minor variants of a single clonal type resembling the Brazilian and Hungarian epidemic MRSA clones, which showed a common <jats:italic>spaA</jats:italic> type and which were either sequence type 239 (ST239) or ST241 (a single-locus variant of ST239) in association with SCC <jats:italic>mec</jats:italic> type III or IIIA. </jats:p>