1.4.

8 Spa Typing
A special form of SLST is the S. aureus protein A gene (Spa) typing, in which the
polymorphic X region of this gene is amplified and sequenced. This methods relies
on the identification of the short repeats in this region, which vary in number of
repeats and point mutations within the repeats. Each repeat is assigned a code and
the spa type is deduced from the order of the specific coded repeats. The discriminatory
power of spa typing is lower than PFGE, but it is very fast, cost
effective, easy to use and has standardized international nomenclature. The major
drawback is the fact that it is a single locus technique and can misclassify isolates.
This is illustrated by the fact that recently, in the Netherlands, the national institute
of public health (RIVM) decided that MLVA typing is to replace the spa typing for
the national MRSA surveillance. According to the data generated over several years
of performing simultaneous spa and MLVA typing, it was shown that MLVA is
superior to spa typing and that MLVA will suffice to characterize MRSA isolates
for surveillance.