Comparison of Automated Ribotyping, Typing, and MLST in 108 Clinical Isolates of from Orthopedic Infections.

108 isolates of , belonging to six large ribogroups according to the automated Ribo-Printer system, were studied with two highly used molecular methods for epidemiological studies, namely multi-locus sequence typing (MLST) and typing, followed by BURP and eBURST v3 analysis for clustering types and sequence (ST) types. The aim was to evaluate whether automated ribotyping could be considered a useful screening tool for identifying genetic lineages with respect to typing and MLST. Clarifying the relationship of riboprinting with these typing methods and establishing whether ribogroups fit single clonal complexes were two main objectives. Further information on the genetic profile of the isolates was obtained from typing and the search for the , genes, and the IS insertion sequence. Automated ribotyping has been shown to predict clonal complexes and MLST clonal complexes. The high cost and lower discriminatory power of automated ribotyping compared to and MSLT typing could be an obstacle to fine genotyping analyzes, especially when high discriminatory power is required. On the other hand, numerous advantages such as automation, ease and speed of execution, stability, typeability and reproducibility make ribotyping a reliable method to be juxtaposed to gold standard methods.