Repeats in the 3′ region of the protein A gene is unique in a strain of Staphylococcus aureus recovered from wound infections in Lagos, Nigeria

Bacterial strain typing has quite a lot of important applications in microbiology. In medical practice, strain typing is useful for diagnosis and determining strategies for treatment of infections. More essentially, it is considered for rapid identification of disease outbreaks and new virulent strains. In this study, Protein A gene (spa) short sequence repeats region sequencing was used to measure relatedness among a collection Staphylococcus aureus were recovered from patients presenting with different degree of wound infections at three major hospitals in Lagos, Nigeria. The strains were also compared with representative sputum and blood isolates. From the pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) fingerprinting generated, the seventeen S. aureus isolates was defined as belonging to diverse genotypes with isolates recovered from different individuals generally having distinctive profile. Spa typing distinguished five major "clones" within the three hospitals and classified the some wound strains and the sputum representative as members of the same clone (spa 7). The predominant occurrence of spa 454 suggested the propensity of the clone to be involved in outbreaks. A combination of codon giving a unique cassette was however identified in the whole set and was postulated that this might be restricted to the indigenous strains in Nigeria.