A multidrug-resistant, methicillin-susceptible strain of Staphylococcus aureus from a neonatal intensive care unit in Oslo, Norway

Abstract

Over a 6-month period in 2008, approximately 15% of all Staphylococcus aureus isolates from our neonatal intensive care unit were resistant to penicillin, gentamicin, erythromycin and clindamycin. Extended antibiotic susceptibility testing and molecular profiling revealed an outbreak of an S. aureus strain with a rare susceptibility pattern for a Scandinavian setting.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Lise Andresen, Marie Elisabeth Vad and Inger Christine Walstad for their excellent technical assistance, the National Reference Laboratory for MRSA in Norway (St. Olav Hospital, Trondheim University, Norway) for PVL gene analysis, spa-typing and MLST analysis, and Patricia Merckoll for language editing of this paper.

Declaration of interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.