Histochemical identification of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus: contribution to preventing nosocomial infection

Histopathological diagnosis of bacterial infection remains a technical challenge. Application of histochemistry provides a prospect of the improvement of diagnostic quality. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), the most common drug-resistant bacterium, is of clinical importance in making appropriate histopathological diagnosis. Recently, community-acquired MRSA has expanded, in addition to conventional hospital-acquired MRSA. Immunohistochemical identification of MRSA requires antibodies against both species-specific antigens and penicillin-binding protein 2′ (PBP2′), whereas a species-specific gene and mec A encoding PBP2′ can be the target of in situ hybridization (ISH) detection. Specificity verification in histochemistry should be emphasized, since S. aureus commonly expresses protein A in the cell wall, whose immunoglobulin-binding capacity is retrieved by heating pretreatment of routinely prepared sections. The ISH technique for MRSA needs meticulous pretreatment of routine paraffin-embedded sections and signal enhancement sequence. This review focuses on such histopathological approaches, which should have profound potential for contributing to decreasing and preventing nosocomial infection of MRSA.

Keywords: MRSA, Protein A, Penicillin-binding protein, Histopathological diagnosis, Immunohistochemistry, In situ hybridization