Analysis of three phenotyping methods and pulsed-field gel electrophoresis for differentiation of methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus isolated from two hospitals in Thailand.

Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is an important hospital and community-acquired pathogen. Rapid and reliable epidemiologic typing is necessary for controlling the spread of MRSA outbreak. The objective of this study was to compare the phenotyping with the genotyping method to differentiate MRSA isolates obtained from the two hospitals in Thailand (central and northeastern).

Occurrence of extended-spectrum beta-lactamase in clinical isolates of Klebsiella pneumoniae in a University Hospital, Thailand.

The occurrence and antimicrobial susceptibility of extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL)-producing Klebsiella pneumoniae in patients attending Siriraj Hospital in Bangkok from August 2000 to January 2001 were determined. ESBL-producing isolates were screened with four different methods: disk diffusion according to the National Committee for Clinical Laboratory Standards (NCCLS) guidelines, Etest ESBL (CT/CTL and TZ/TZL), Oxoid combination discs and MIC Etest strip. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing were determined by a microdilution automatic method (VITEX system, bioMerieux).

Detection of Clostridium difficile toxin A and B genes from stool samples of Thai diarrheal patients by polymerase chain reaction technique.

The prevalence of Clostridium difficile isolated from stools of Thai adult patients with suspected antibiotic-associated diarrhea (AAD) was 18.64 per cent. The recovery rate of toxin genes (tcdA and tcdB) by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) from stool samples yielded almost the same compared to the recovery rate of the toxin detection by enzyme immunoassay (EIA), which were 44.