MOLECULAR TYPING OF STAPHYLOCOCCUS AUREUS ISOLATED FROM PATIENTS AND MEMBERS OF THE NURSING TEAM

Abstract

This quantitative, exploratory and analytical study was undertaken in the period March-June 2010, in the Intensive Care Unit of a hospital in the state of Paraná, with the objective of identifying the genetic profile of samples of Staphylococcus aureus isolated from patients and members of the nursing team. The susceptibility to oxacillin was evaluated by the test for determining the minimum inhibitory concentration, and the polymerase chain reaction technique was used for carrying out the genotyping. Some associations of interest were verified using the Chi-square test, adopting p= ≤0.05. Among the 61 samples from 46 patients, 44.26% had a degree of similarity over 80%; six samples, paired two-by-two, had 100% similarity. Among the 20 samples from the 13 health care professionals, 65% had a similarity of over 80%. The existence of strains with identical, or similar, genetic profiles was observed. However, it was not possible to state that clonal dissemination occurred in this unit.

Keywords

• Genetic typing techniques
• Staphylococcus aureus
• Intensive care units
• Nursing
• Resistance to methycillin