Nov 29, 2006 - Barry D. Cookson,1 D. Ashley Robinson,2 Alastair B. Monk,3 Stephen Murchan,4 Ariane Deplano,5. Rafaël de Ryck,5 Marc J. Struelens,5 ...
JOURNAL OF CLINICAL MICROBIOLOGY, June 2007, p. 1830–1837 0095-1137/07/$08.00⫹0 doi:10.1128/JCM.02402-06 Copyright © 2007, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Vol. 45, No. 6
Evaluation of Molecular Typing Methods in Characterizing a European Collection of Epidemic Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Strains: the HARMONY Collection䌤 Barry D. Cookson,1 D. Ashley Robinson,2 Alastair B. Monk,3 Stephen Murchan,4 Ariane Deplano,5 Rafae¨l de Ryck,5 Marc J. Struelens,5 Christina Scheel,6 Vivian Fussing,6 Saara Salmenlinna,7 Jaana Vuopio-Varkila,7 Christina Cuny,8 Wolfgang Witte,8 Panayotis T. Tassios,9 Nikolas J. Legakis,9 Willem van Leeuwen,10 Alex van Belkum,10 Anna Vindel,11 Javier Garaizar,12 Sara Haeggman,13 Barbro Olsson-Liljequist,13 Ulrika Ransjo,14 Manica Muller-Premru,15 Waleria Hryniewicz,16 Angela Rossney,17 Brian O’Connell,17 Benjamin D. Short,18 Jonathan Thomas,18 Simon O’Hanlon,18 and Mark C. Enright18* Laboratory of Hospital Infection, Centre for Infections, Health Protection Agency, London, United Kingdom1; New York Medical School, New York, New York2; Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia3; Health Protection Surveillance Centre, Dublin, Ireland4; Laboratoire de Microbiologie, Hopital Erasme, Bruxelles, Belgium5; Statens Serum Institut, Copenhagen, Denmark6; National Public Health Laboratory (KTL), Helsinki, Finland7; Robert Koch-Institut, Wernigerode (Harz), Germany8; Department of Microbiology, University of Athens, Athens, Greece9; Erasmus MC Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands10; Centro Nacional de Microbiologı´a, Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid, Spain11; Dpt. Immunol., Microbiol. y Parasitol., F. Farmacia, UPV/EHU, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain12; Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease Control, Solna, Sweden13; Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease Control, Solna, Sweden14; Institute of Microbiology, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia15; Sera and Vaccines Central Research Laboratory, Warsaw, Poland16; National MRSA Reference Laboratory, St James’s Hospital, James’s St., Dublin 8, Ireland17; and Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Imperial College, London, United Kingdom18 Received 29 November 2006/Returned for modification 8 January 2007/Accepted 1 March 2007
We analyzed a representative sample of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) from 11 European countries (referred to as the HARMONY collection) using three molecular typing methods used within the HARMONY group to examine their usefulness for large, multicenter MRSA surveillance networks that use these different laboratory methodologies. MRSA isolates were collected based on their prevalence in each center and their genetic diversity, assessed by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). PFGE groupings (
