Sunarjati Sudigdoadi

Detection of Staphylococcus aureus’s Strain Similarity on Surgical Ward Nurses’s Hand and Nose and Post Operative Wound Infection Using Coa Gene Through PCR-RFLP Method

Staphylococcus aureus remains to be the most important cause of surgical wound infection. Nurses could become a reservoir to transmit S. aureus through contaminated hand transiently, or through colonized noses. Alu / restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analysis of the coagulase gene (coa gene) by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method were able to detect similarity between 30 isolates from patients with surgical wound infection and 20 isolates from hands and noses of the nurses in charge (15 isolates from hands and 5 isolates from noses). Seven distinct PCR product and twelve distinct RFLP patterns were observed with most of PCR product is nearing 600 by (15 samples) and most of RFLP patterns nearing 300 bp. Five patients out of 30 (17 %) showed no PCRRFLP similarity with any nurse. Ten out of 15 nurses which hands were positive for S. aureus had PCR-RFLP similarity with some patients. There was only 1 out of 5 nurses showed PCR-RFLP similarity with some patients. Statistically, proportion of the similar PCR-RFLP between those samples in this study was 0,12 (12 %). In conclusion, nurses, as potential reservoir, had 12 % PCR-RFLP similarity for S. aureus with surgical wound infection. It may be necessary to examine other possible reservoir of S. aureus surgical wound infection with PCRRFLP method using coa gene in order to find the source of nosocomial surgical wound infection.