In addition to Staphylococcus aureus, there are a small number of other coagulase-positive staphylococci. We have become increasingly aware of these due to improvements in identification methods used in clinical laboratories. Staphylococcus argenteus is a coagulase-positive Staphylococcus that, until now, had mainly been detected in Australia, the Pacific Islands and Thailand. It was thought that the species might be geographically restricted, however a paper in the June issue of the Journal of Clinical Microbiology describes a large number of isolates collected from patients in North America. We’ll be talking to two of the authors of this paper.

Guests: Dr. Julianne Kus, Dr. Audrey Schuetz