The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 269 No 7207 p92
20 July 2002

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First case of VRSA in United States

The first case of Staphylococcus aureus with high-level resistance to the antibiotic vancomycin has been reported in the United States, according to the Public Health Laboratory Service, London.

Strains of the bacterium with intermediate resistance have been reported previously, but this is the first fully vancomycin resistant S aureus (VRSA) strain and the first one to acquire an efficient mechanism of resistance from a different bacterium.

Dr David Livermore, director of the PHLS antimicrobial resistance monitoring and reference laboratory, said: "This is disturbing. Laboratory investigations in the United States suggest that the organism became resistant by acquiring a resistance gene from another — less serious — germ known as an enterococcus, in which vancomycin-resistance is already well established. In effect, the resistance mechanism jumped from the enterococcus to the S aureus. This transfer is something that we have anticipated and feared ever since vancomycin-resistant enterococci were discovered 16 years ago."