Emerging Infectious Disease ISSN: 1080-6059

Fatal Case Due to Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Small Colony Variants in an AIDS Patient

Harald Seifert*

, Christoph von Eiff†, and Gerd Fätkenheuer†

Author affiliations: *University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany; and; †Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Münster, Germany

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Figure 1

Staphylococcus aureus small colony variants (A) and S. aureus with a normal phenotype (B) cultured on sheep blood agar after 24 hours of incubation at 35°C. Staphylococci were identified by conventional methods (6) and with the ID 32 Staph system (bioMérieux, Marcy-L'Etoile, France) following the instructions of the manufacturer. The tube-coagulase test was read after 24 hours. S. aureus isolates were characterized as small colony variants as described before (7-8). Auxotrophic requirements were

Figure 1. Staphylococcus aureus small colony variants (A) and S. aureus with a normal phenotype (B) cultured on sheep blood agar after 24 hours of incubation at 35°C. Staphylococci were identified by conventional methods (6) and with the ID 32 Staph system (bioMérieux, Marcy-L'Etoile, France) following the instructions of the manufacturer. The tube-coagulase test was read after 24 hours. S. aureus isolates were characterized as small colony variants as described before (7-8). Auxotrophic requirements were evaluated with 10-µg hemin disks, 1.5-µg menadione disks, and 1.5-µg thymidine disks on Mueller-Hinton agar and on chemically defined medium (CDM) agar as well as on CDM agar supplemented with 1 µg/mL hemin, 100 µg/mL thymidine, and 1 µg/mL menadione, respectively.

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