SENSITIVITY AND SPECIFICITY OF AN IMPROVED RAPID LATEX AGGLUTINATION-TEST FOR IDENTIFICATION OF METHICILLIN-SENSITIVE AND METHICILLIN-RESISTANT STAPHYLOCOCCUS-AUREUS ISOLATES

The performance of a second-generation rapid agglutination kit, Slider Staph Plus (SSP; bioMerieux), was compared to those of the Slider Sta ph (SS; bioMerieux), Staphaurex (SRX; Murex Diagnostics), and BBL Stap hyloslide (BBL; Becton Dickinson) kits by using 508 clinical isolates composed of 150 methicillin-sensitive Staphylococcus aureus (MSSA) org anisms, 154 methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) organisms, and 204 non-S. aureus Staphylococcus spp, Of the 508 isolates tested, 75% were fresh clinical isolates, with the remainder taken from five different freezer collections. All four agglutination tests had comparable sens itivities for MSSA and MRSA, However, the SS kit was significantly les s specific (93.1%) than the three other tests (P > 0.05, McNemar test) , These results demonstrate that the new rapid latex agglutination kit , SSP, was more specific for the identification of S. aureus than the previous version and performed comparably to the SRX and BBL kits.