Abstract
Mupirocin susceptibility testing of Staphylococcus aureus has become more important as mupirocin is used more widely to suppress or eliminate S. aureus colonization and prevent subsequent health care- and community-associated infections. The present multicenter study evaluated two susceptibility testing screening methods to detect mupirocin high-level resistance (HLR), broth microdilution (BMD) MICs of >or=512 microg/ml, and a 6-mm zone diameter for a disk diffusion (DD) test with a 200-microg disk. Initial testing indicated that with Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute methods for BMD and DD testing, the optimal conditions for the detection of mupirocin HLR were 24 h of incubation and reading of the DD zone diameters with transmitted light. Using the presence or absence of mupA as the "gold standard" for HLR, the sensitivity and specificity of a single-well 256 microg/ml BMD test were 97 and 99%, respectively, and those for the 200-microg disk test were 98 and 99%, respectively. Testing with two disks, 200 microg and 5 microg, was evaluated for its ability to distinguish HLR isolates (MICs >or= 512 microg/ml), low-level-resistant (LLR) isolates (MICs = 8 to 256 microg/ml), and susceptible isolates (MICs