Staphylococcus aureus epidemiology in paediatric hospital

In this study, we performed whole-genome sequencing of 184 Staphylococcus aureus isolates from 135 patients treated in different departments of an Italian paediatric hospital. Samples included both MRSA and MSSA isolated from different body sites. Overall, the selected 135 single-patient isolates belonged to 28 different sequence types (STs) and 41 spa-types, and 28.1% of the samples were positive for Panton-Valentine Leucocidin (PVL). We moreover tested the presence of a number of virulence and antibiotic resistance genes, which were conserved at different levels. We moreover highlighted the presence of a very specific ST1-SCCmecIV-t127 PVL- clone, and we reconstructed its timed phylogenetic tree by including available reference genomes to understand whether it was a newly arising clone specific of the hospital considered.