PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Ágnes Sonnevend
AU  - Iain Blair
AU  - Mohammed Alkaabi
AU  - Pauline Jumaa
AU  - Mohammed al Haj
AU  - Akela Ghazawi
AU  - Nadia Akawi
AU  - Fatima Saeed Jouhar
AU  - Mohammad Baraa Hamadeh
AU  - Tibor Pál
TI  - Change in meticillin-resistant <em>Staphylococcus aureus</em> clones at a tertiary care hospital in the United Arab Emirates over a 5-year period
AID  - 10.1136/jclinpath-2011-200436
DP  - 2012 Feb 01
TA  - Journal of Clinical Pathology
PG  - 178--182
VI  - 65
IP  - 2
4099  - http://jcp.bmj.com/content/65/2/178.short
4100  - http://jcp.bmj.com/content/65/2/178.full
SO  - J Clin Pathol2012 Feb 01; 65
AB  - Aims Meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) strains isolated in Tawam Hospital, a tertiary care hospital in the United Arab Emirates, were examined in order to understand the reasons for a doubling of its incidence between 2003 and 2008 while maintaining the same infection control measures.Methods All consecutive non-duplicate clinically relevant MRSA isolates recovered between January and December 2003 and between May and October 2008 were studied. The antibiotic susceptibility, pulsed field gel electrophoresis, toxin gene, staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec), spa, agr and multilocus sequence types of the strains were tested.Results In 2003, typical healthcare-associated (HA-MRSA) genotypes (ST239-MRSA-III, ST22-MRSA-IV and ST5-MRSA-II) represented the majority (61.5%) of the isolates. By 2008 this pattern had changed and clonal types considered as community-associated (CA) MRSA comprised 73.1% of the strains with ST80-MRSA-IV, ST5-MRSA-IV and ST1-MRSA with non-typable SCCmec types being the most frequent. However, further epidemiological investigations showed that only one-third of the CA-MRSA infections were actually acquired in the community, indicating that CA-MRSA clones have entered and spread within the hospital.Conclusions The emergence of CA-MRSA clones with subsequent entry to and spread within the hospital has contributed to the increasing incidence of MRSA observed in Tawam Hospital and probably also in other hospitals in the UAE.