TY - JOUR AU - Schwaber, Mitchell J. AU - Wright, Sharon B. AU - Carmeli, Yehuda AU - Venkataraman, Lata AU - DeGirolami, Paola C. AU - Gramatikova, Aneta AU - Perl, Trish M. AU - Sakoulas, George AU - Gold, Howard S. T1 - Clinical Implications of Varying Degrees of Vancomycin Susceptilibity in Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Bacteremia T2 - Emerging Infectious Disease journal PY - 2003 VL - 9 IS - 6 SP - 657 SN - 1080-6059 AB - We conducted a retrospective study of the clinical aspects of bacteremia caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) with heterogeneously reduced susceptibility to vancomycin. Bloodstream MRSA isolates were screened for reduced susceptibility by using brain-heart infusion agar, including 4 mg/L vancomycin with and without 4% NaCl. Patients whose isolates exhibited growth (case-patients) were compared with those whose isolates did not (controls) for demographics, coexisting chronic conditions, hospital events, antibiotic exposures, and outcomes. Sixty-one (41%) of 149 isolates exhibited growth. Subclones from 46 (75%) of these had a higher MIC of vancomycin than did their parent isolates. No isolates met criteria for vancomycin heteroresistance. No differences in potential predictors or in outcomes were found between case-patients and controls. These data show that patients with vancomycin-susceptible MRSA bacteremia have similar baseline clinical features and outcomes whether or not their bacterial isolates exhibit growth on screening media containing vancomycin. KW - Staphylococcus aureus KW - methicillin resistance KW - vancomycin resistance KW - drug resistance KW - bacterial KW - bacteremia KW - bacterial infections KW - research KW - United States DO - 10.3201/eid0906.030001 UR - https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/9/6/03-0001_article ER - End of Reference