Author(s)

Stephen C. Edberg^1*, J. Michael Miller²

¹Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA.
²Microbiology Technical Services, Dunwoody, GA, USA.

Epidemiological surveillance for microbes is currently based on either agar culture followed by identification, or genetic amplification. Both techniques are highly skilled-labor intensive, costly, and must be done in central laboratories. The Defined Substrate Utilization^® (DSU^®) format provides an epidemiological series of specific screening formulations that obviate these limitations. All reagents are present in optimized stable powder form in a test tube—add water, inoculate, and incubate. A specific color change provides a sensitive and specific detection of the target microbe. Two DSU^® methods for Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) are presented: aureusAlert^® for all S. aureus and EPI-M^® for methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA). Both aureusAlert^® and EPI-M^® had a detection level of 20 colony forming units (CFU) in 18 hours. aureusAlert^® and conventional methods agreed 93.6% and EPI-M^® and conventional methods agreed 94.1%. DSU^® and conventional methods showed the same specificity.

MRSA, Staphylococcus aureus, Methicillin-Resistant, Epidemiology

Edberg, S. and Miller, J. (2014) A New Epidemiological Tool for Staphylococcus aureus Surveillance. Advances in Microbiology, 4, 919-924. doi: 10.4236/aim.2014.413102.