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Volume 5, Number 3—June 1999
Dispatch

Fatal Case Due to Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Small Colony Variants in an AIDS Patient

Harald Seifert*Comments to Author , Christoph von Eiff†, and Gerd Fätkenheuer†
Author affiliations: *University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany; and; †Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Münster, Germany

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Figure 2

Fingerprint patterns obtained for Staphylococcus aureus small colony variants (lanes 3-5, bloodculture isolates; lanes 6 and 7, isolates from hip abscess; lane 8, postmortem specimen) and S. aureus isolates with a normal phenotype (lanes 10 and 11, isolates from nose and throat; lanes 12 and 13, isolates from hip abscess and postmortem specimen) after polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis of inter-IS256 spacer length showing identical strains. Lane 1, 100-bp ladder; lanes 2, 9, and 16, methic

Figure 2. Fingerprint patterns obtained for Staphylococcus aureus small colony variants (lanes 3-5, bloodculture isolates; lanes 6 and 7, isolates from hip abscess; lane 8, postmortem specimen) and S. aureus isolates with a normal phenotype (lanes 10 and 11, isolates from nose and throat; lanes 12 and 13, isolates from hip abscess and postmortem specimen) after polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis of inter-IS256 spacer length showing identical strains. Lane 1, 100-bp ladder; lanes 2, 9, and 16, methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) reference strain; lanes 14 and 15, epidemiologically unrelated MRSA strains. Strain relatedness of all isolates with different colony morphologies and from different sources was analyzed by PCR analysis of inter-IS256 spacer length polymorphisms (9) and pulsed-field gel electrophoresis after SmaI restriction (8). Minor modifications included the use of brain heart infusion broth instead of trypticase soy broth to obtain sufficient growth of S. aureus small colony variants.

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