Staphylococcus argenteus is a new bacterial species described in 2015, which was previously known as clonal complex CC75 of the species Staphylococcus aureus, but now forms the S. aureus complex together with four other bacterial species. S. argenteus is very similar to S. aureus in its pathogenicity and is distributed worldwide. It is therefore important to recognize it in routine diagnostics, to have methods that reliably identify it and to accurately report it in the test results. One clinical isolate of S. argenteus from the Central Slovenia region was identified from a nasal swab in routine laboratory diagnostics by culture. We phenotypically characterized the clinical isolate and determined by antibiotic susceptibility testing that it was sensitive to all antibiotics tested except penicillin. We tested the ability of the methods to identify S. argenteus in routine tests. We found that the species can be identified by MALDI-TOF MS, by sequencing of the nucA gene and by the newly described target species-specific PCR Sa-Sarg. The species cannot be recognized or identified to the species level by the appearance of colonies on commonly used solid media and chromogenic media for S. aureus, by the rapid agglutination test Pastorex (Bio-Rad) or by bacterial broad-spectrum PCR. These methods can only identify it to the level of S. aureus complex. Among the 325 MRSA isolates from the surveillance samples of patients from the Central Slovenia region between 1. 1. 2019 and 30. 6. 2019, we did not find any isolate belonging to the species S. argenteus using MALDI-TOF MS. Among the 42 clinical DNA isolates from primarily sterile sites from the period between 1. 1. 2022 and 15. 10. 2023, in which we identified S. aureus with bacterial broad-spectrum PCR, we found with the use of PCR Sa-Sarg that no isolate belonged to the species S. argenteus. Although methicillin-susceptible S. argenteus is present in the Central Slovenia region, the frequency of infections is very low. There is no evidence of methicillin-resistant S. argenteus, therefore it is most probably not present in the region.
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