Rapid Discrimination between Methicillin-Sensitive and Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Using MALDI-TOF Mass Spectrometry.

　Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is one of the major pathogens responsible for nosocomial infections. The presence of MRSA in a hospital is detrimental to patients and to hospital management. Thus, rapid identification of MRSA is needed.

Rapid identification of microorganisms by mass spectrometry: improved performance by incorporation of in-house spectral data into a commercial database.

Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) is increasingly used as a microbial diagnostic method for species identification of pathogens. However, MALDI-TOF identification of bacteria at the species level remains unsatisfactory, with the major problem being an incomplete database that still needs refinement and expansion. Augmentation of the original MALDI BioTyper 2.

Use of the MALDI BioTyper system with MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry for rapid identification of microorganisms.

In a clinical diagnosis microbiology laboratory, the current method of identifying bacterial isolates is based mainly on phenotypic characteristics, for example growth pattern on different media, colony morphology, Gram stain, and various biochemical reactions. These techniques collectively enable great accuracy in identifying most bacterial isolates, but are costly and time-consuming. In our clinical microbiology laboratory, we prospectively assessed the ability of matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) to identify bacterial strains that were routinely isolated from clinical samples.