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Chapter 9: Summary
Author(s) -
Mark J Ambrose
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
apmis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.909
H-Index - 88
eISSN - 1600-0463
pISSN - 0903-4641
DOI - 10.1111/j.1600-0463.1999.tb05682.x
Subject(s) - citation , computer science , information retrieval , library science
The present thesis deals with various aspects of handling coagulase-negative staphylococci (CoNS) in the local clinical microbiology laboratory. CoNS are normal inhabitants of the skin and mucus membranes and are increasingly being recognised as opportunistic pathogens causing infection in the immunocompromised host, in particular patients with indwelling plastic devices. In particular the finding of CoNS in specimens which should normally be sterile, such as blood cultures, is of interest. The isolation of the same strain of an opportunistic pathogen, such as CoNS, enhance the likelihood of the bacteria causing infection. Multiple antibiotic resistance, in particular methicillin resistance, is frequent among CoNS hospital-strains on a global scale. p-lactam antibiotics are the most valuable antibiotics for the treatment of infection with susceptible CoNS. A reliable method for the detection of methicillin resistance, and hereby resistance to all p-lactam antibiotics, is therefore important. A simple identification method, Minibact-S, has been developed. Minibact-S can identify the CoNS species, which are the most frequently occurring in human specimens. Furthermore, Minibact-S can subtype Staphylococcus epidermidis. Another phenotypic typing method, lectin typing, has been developed for typing S. epidermidis. Lectin typing involves the binding of various biotinylated lectins to the surface of whole immobilised cells of CoNS. Lectins are proteins or glycoproteins which bind specifically to various glycans. When the lectins: Wheat Germ Agglutinin (WGA), Soy Bean Agglutinin (SBA), Concanavalin A (ConA), and Lens Culinaris Agglutinin (LCA) were included, typing of S. epidermidis gave a discriminatory power of the same magnitude as found for DNA-plasmid profile analysis. Lectin typing could be used as a supplementary typing method for S. epidermidis in the local clinical microbiology laboratory, since the method is simple, reproducible and does not require expensive and sophisticated equipment. Various typing schemes for S. epidermidis, i.e. typing which involves several typing methods, have been tested: