- Joined
- Nov 9, 2008
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Hey guys,
I'm trying to help the vet hospital I shadow at become competent at identifying MRSA in an infected patient. So far we've got the methicillin-resistant part taken care of.
What we really need is a way to distinguish between the different species of Staph. Now I'm a PhD student in Micro, but most of my micro books are related to human medicine, so they deal almost exclusively with S. aureus and S. epidermidis.
What I would love to know are what are the other common Staph species that infect dogs/cats etc. (it's exclusively small animal).
So far I've found (via google):
S. dermatitis, S. intermedius, and S. hyicus (although this looks to be almost exclusively for pigs?)
We don't want to have to do a coagulase test (if we can avoid it, besides it looks like S. intermedius is coagulase + along with S. aureus).
I was thinking maybe hemolysis on blood agar plates might be indicative along with mannitol salt fermentation?
I know S. aureus is beta-hemolytic and a mannitol salt fermenter.
Do you guys know of any other Staph species we could frequently encounter in a small animal hospital and whether they are alpha/beta/non-hemolytic and fermenters of mannitol salts?
it's probably a long shot. I'm just having trouble finding things on google and in my books.
I'm trying to help the vet hospital I shadow at become competent at identifying MRSA in an infected patient. So far we've got the methicillin-resistant part taken care of.
What we really need is a way to distinguish between the different species of Staph. Now I'm a PhD student in Micro, but most of my micro books are related to human medicine, so they deal almost exclusively with S. aureus and S. epidermidis.
What I would love to know are what are the other common Staph species that infect dogs/cats etc. (it's exclusively small animal).
So far I've found (via google):
S. dermatitis, S. intermedius, and S. hyicus (although this looks to be almost exclusively for pigs?)
We don't want to have to do a coagulase test (if we can avoid it, besides it looks like S. intermedius is coagulase + along with S. aureus).
I was thinking maybe hemolysis on blood agar plates might be indicative along with mannitol salt fermentation?
I know S. aureus is beta-hemolytic and a mannitol salt fermenter.
Do you guys know of any other Staph species we could frequently encounter in a small animal hospital and whether they are alpha/beta/non-hemolytic and fermenters of mannitol salts?
it's probably a long shot. I'm just having trouble finding things on google and in my books.