Abstract
46 clinical isolates, 28 nuc-carrying and 18 nuc-negative isolates, and 23 mecA-carrying and 23 mecA-negative isolates were subjected to a developed duplex isothermal enzymatic recombinase amplification assay accompanied by a lateral flow assay (ERA-LFA) method for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) detection. Additionally, 57 positive blood culture samples from patients were evaluated for preliminary testing. The sensitivity and specificity among the 46 clinical samples were 100% (28/28) and 88.9% (16/18), respectively, for nuc detection, and 100.0% (23/23 and 23/23) for mecA detection. For the 57 positive blood culture bottles, the ERA-LFA provided 100.0% (34/34) sensitivity and 95.7% (22/23) specificity for nuc detection and 96.5% specificity (55/57) for mecA detection. The detection limits of the ERA-LFA for the nuc and mecA genes were 1 and 10 CFU/reaction, respectively.