Prevalence and Characterization of Heterogeneous Vancomycin-Intermediate Staphylococcus aureus Isolates from 14 Cities in China
Abstract
Prevalence and Characterization of Heterogeneous Vancomycin-Intermediate Staphylococcus aureus Isolates from 14 Cities in China ‡ ▿ Wenjia Sun 1 , 2 , † , Hongbin Chen 1 , 2 , † , Yudong Liu 1 , 2 , Chunjiang Zhao 1 , 2 , Wright W. Nichols 3 , Minjun Chen 1 , Jianzhong Zhang 4 , Yue Ma 5 and Hui Wang 1 , 2 , * 1 Department of Clinical Laboratory, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing 100730, People's Republic of China 2 Graduate School, Peking Union Medical College, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing 100730, People's Republic of China 3 AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals LP, Waltham, Massachusetts 02451 4 Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Beijing 102206, People's Republic of China 5 National Institute for the Control of Pharmaceutical and Biological Products, Beijing 100050, People's Republic of China ABSTRACT The prevalence of heterogeneous vancomycin-intermediate Staphylococcus aureus (hVISA) among 1,012 vancomycin-susceptible methicillin (meticillin)-resistant S. aureus isolates collected from 14 cities in China from 2005 to 2007 was 13 to 16%, as determined by a combination of (i) measurement by the modified population analysis profile-area under the curve method (PAP-AUC) and (ii) estimation from the measured sensitivity and specificity of a screening method. Two hundred isolates from blood were chosen as a subset for measurement of the sensitivities and the specificities of several previously described screening methods by using the results of PAP-AUC as the reference. During this testing, one isolate was found to be a vancomycin-intermediate S. aureus (VISA) strain so was not used in the evaluation of the screening tests. Of the other 199 isolates, 26 (13.1%) were hVISA, as assessed by PAP-AUC. A screening cascade of culturing the isolates on brain heart infusion agar containing teicoplanin (5 mg/liter) and then subjecting the positive isolates to a macro-Etest method was applied to the 812 non-blood isolates, yielding 149 positive results. From these results and by adjusting for sensitivity (0.423) and specificity (0.861), the prevalence was estimated to be 15.7%. The precision of that estimate was assessed by reapplying the screening cascade to 120 randomly selected isolates from the 812 non-blood isolates and simultaneously determining their heterogeneous vancomycin-intermediate susceptibility status by PAP-AUC. Because PAP-AUC is impractical for use with large numbers of isolates, the screening-based estimation method is useful as a first approximation of the prevalence of hVISA. Of the 27 VISA or hVISA isolates from blood, 22.2% and 74.1% were staphylococcal chromosome cassette mec types II and III, respectively, while 77.8% and 22.2% were agr type 1 and agr type 2, respectively; the MIC ranges were 0.5 to 4 mg/liter for vancomycin and 0.25 to 1 mg/liter for daptomycin.