Genetic correlation of community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus strains from carriers and from patients with clinical infection in one region of Korea

Community-acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA) is an increasingly common worldwide and colonizing S. aureus strains may serve as the causative pathogen for overt clinical infections. This study was performed to determine whether the pathogenic CA-MRSA isolate in clinical infections was genetically related to the MRSA isolates in community carriers. We prospectively collected a total of 42 CA-MRSA isolates (23 clinical infection isolates and 19 colonization isolates) in a local region of Korea. Antimicrobial susceptibility tests, staphylococcal toxin assays, SCCmec typing, multilocus sequence typing (MLST), and spa (staphylococcal protein A) typing were performed with all isolates. Thirty-four (81%) of 42 CA-MRSA isolates belonged to sequence type (ST) 72 in the MLST analysis. The distribution of STs did not differ significantly between colonization and clinical infection isolates (89.5% [17/19] vs. 73.9% [17/23], P=0.26). Among the ST72-MRSA isolates, spa type t664 (18, 52.9%) and t324 (8, 23.5%) were common in both groups. This study demonstrates that the community-associated MRSA strains from patients with clinical infections are closely related to the strains found in carriers from one local community.