History of MRSA?

Question

Where did MRSA origonate and when?

Answer 1

See sequence below:

Staphylococcus aureus was discovered in Aberdeen, Scotland in 1880 by the surgeon Sir Alexander Ogston in pus from surgical abscesses.

The discovery of penicillin is usually attributed to Scottish scientist Sir Alexander Fleming in 1928.

On 1942 John Bumstead and Orvan Hess became the first in the world to successfully treat a patient using penicillin.

MRSA was first discovered in the UK in 1961.
[Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a specific strain of the Staphylococcus aureus bacterium that has developed antibiotic resistance to all penicillins, including methicillin and other narrow-spectrum β-lactamase-resistant penicillin antibiotics]

Answer 2

Methicillin is an antibiotic that was introduced in 1959 to treat infections caused by penicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. In 1961 there were reports from the United Kingdom of S. aureus isolates that had acquired resistance to methicillin (methicillin-resistant S. aureus, MRSA), and MRSA isolates were soon recovered from other European countries, and later from Japan, Australia, and the United States. MRSA is now a problem in hospitals worldwide and is increasingly recovered from nursing homes and the community.
The methicillin resistance gene (mecA) encodes a methicillin-resistant penicillin-binding protein that is not present in susceptible strains and is believed to have been acquired from a distantly related species. mecA is carried on a mobile genetic element, the staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec), of which four forms have been described that differ in size and genetic composition. Many MRSA isolates are multiply resistant and are susceptible only to glycopeptide antibiotics such as vancomycin and investigational drugs. MRSA isolates that have decreased susceptibility to glycopeptides (glycopeptide intermediately susceptible S. aureus, GISA), reported in recent years, are a cause of great public health concern.

Answer 3

Please see the web pages for more details on MRSA. The required information is not available in spite of Google search.

Answer 4

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a major cause of hospital-acquired infections that are becoming increasingly difficult to combat because of emerging resistance to all current antibiotic classes. The evolutionary origins of MRSA are poorly understood, no rational nomenclature exists, and there is no consensus on the number of major MRSA clones or the relatedness of clones described from different countries. We resolve all of these issues and provide a more thorough and precise analysis of the evolution of MRSA clones than has previously been possible. Using multilocus sequence typing and an algorithm, BURST, we analyzed an international collection of 912 MRSA and methicillin-susceptible S. aureus (MSSA) isolates. We identified 11 major MRSA clones within five groups of related genotypes. The putative ancestral genotype of each group and the most parsimonious patterns of descent of isolates from each ancestor were inferred by using BURST, which, together with analysis of the methicillin resistance genes, established the likely evolutionary origins of each major MRSA clone, the genotype of the original MRSA clone and its MSSA progenitor, and the extent of acquisition and horizontal movement of the methicillin resistance genes. Major MRSA clones have arisen repeatedly from successful epidemic MSSA strains, and isolates with decreased susceptibility to vancomycin, the antibiotic of last resort, are arising from some of these major MRSA clones, highlighting a depressing progression of increasing drug resistance within a small number of ecologically successful S. aureus genotypes.

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/99/11/7687

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a major cause of hospital-acquired infections that are becoming increasingly difficult to combat because of emerging resistance to all current antibiotic classes. The evolutionary origins of MRSA are poorly understood, no rational nomenclature exists, and there is no consensus on the number of major MRSA clones or the relatedness of clones described from different countries. We resolve all of these issues and provide a more thorough and precise analysis of the evolution of MRSA clones than has previously been possible. Using multilocus sequence typing and an algorithm, BURST, we analyzed an international collection of 912 MRSA and methicillin-susceptible S. aureus (MSSA) isolates. We identified 11 major MRSA clones within five groups of related genotypes. The putative ancestral genotype of each group and the most parsimonious patterns of descent of isolates from each ancestor were inferred by using BURST, which, together with analysis of the methicillin resistance genes, established the likely evolutionary origins of each major MRSA clone, the genotype of the original MRSA clone and its MSSA progenitor, and the extent of acquisition and horizontal movement of the methicillin resistance genes. Major MRSA clones have arisen repeatedly from successful epidemic MSSA strains, and isolates with decreased susceptibility to vancomycin, the antibiotic of last resort, are arising from some of these major MRSA clones, highlighting a depressing progression of increasing drug resistance within a small number of ecologically successful S. aureus genotypes.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=12032344&dopt=medline

...good luck

Answer 5

That is interesting. I know about it, but never thought of the history of it.