Open AccessSimplified and Reliable Scheme for Species-Level Identification of Staphylococcus Clinical Isolates
Author(s) -
Natalia Lopes Pontes Iório,
Rosana B. R. Ferreira,
Ricardo Pinto Schuenck,
Karoline L. Malvar,
Anike Pereira Brilhante,
Andrei Caíque Pires Nunes,
Carla Callegário Reis Bastos,
Kátia Regietto dos Santos
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
journal of clinical microbiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.349
H-Index - 255
eISSN - 1070-633X
pISSN - 0095-1137
DOI - 10.1128/jcm.00679-07
Subject(s) - identification (biology) , microbiology and biotechnology , biology , staphylococcus , computational biology , staphylococcus aureus , genetics , bacteria , ecology
Reliable and rapid identification of staphylococcal strains continues to be a problem faced by many microbiology laboratories. This study evaluates a simplified method that uses a flowchart to assist in the identification of 12 clinical species ofStaphylococcus , including eight subspecies. A total of 198 isolates and 11 control strains were identified by the reference method, which employed 22 tests. The results were compared with those obtained by two other methods: an automated system (MicroScan WalkAway) and a simplified method composed of nine tests. The simplified scheme showed an accuracy of 98.5%, while the automated method showed an accuracy of 79.3% (P < 0.001), in identifying staphylococcal species. Atypical phenotypic profiles were detected by both the reference (55.6%) and the simplified (19.7%) methods. The simplified method proposed here was shown to be reliable, with the advantage of being more practical and economic than the reference method.