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Volume 13, Number 10—October 2007

Research

Rapid Increase of Genetically Diverse Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus, Copenhagen, Denmark

Mette Damkjær Bartels*, Kit Boye*, Anders Rhod Larsen†, Robert Skov†, and Henrik Westh*†Comments to Author 
Author affiliations: *Hvidovre Hospital, Hvidovre, Denmark; †Statens Serum Institut, Copenhagen, Denmark;

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Table 1

Demographics, infection types, and distribution of MRSA types in 143 cases of MRSA*

Community onset, community risk Community onset, no risk Hospital acquired in Denmark Community onset, healthcare associated Imported
No. cases 30 35 37 36
Male, % 67 46 57 42
Median age, y (range) 27 (1–74) 32 (0–90) 80 (28–94) 82 (6–95)
Carrier, no.
 8
 1
 2
 2
 4†
Type of infection, no.
SSTI 22 29 17 23
Blood 0 0 2 2
Deep-seated abscess, no. 0 1 5 3
UTI 0 4 8 5
LRTI
 0
 0
 3
 1
 1†
Four most common CCs (87% of all isolates)
CC 8, % 23 34 81 69
t008, no. 3 7 0 2
t024, no. 3 5 28 20
CC 80, % 20 34 3 0
CC 30, % 50 6 0 0
CC 5, % 3 11 5 8
Other MLST types,% 4 15 11 23
PVL positive, % 83 80 8 17
SCCmec IV, % 93 89 89 81

*MRSA, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus; SSTI, skin and soft tissue infection; UTI, urinary tract infection; LRTI, lower respiratory tract infection; CC, clonal complex; MLST, multilocus sequence typing; PVL, Panton-Valentine leukocidin; SCC, staphylococcal chromosome cassette.
†A t037/ST239-III was imported from Greece, where this MRSA is common (20); ST239 is closely related to ST8 and is the well-known pandemic Brazilian/Hungarian clone (21); t041/ST111 was imported from an Italian hospital; t003/ST225-II (New York clone) was imported from Germany; t354/ST22-IV, a variant of EMRSA15, was imported from Lanzarote (Spain); and t067/ST125-I was imported from Spain.

Main Article

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Page updated: July 02, 2010
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