Patent ID: 8911946

Claim:
A method of establishing whether a nasal swab sample contains methicillin-sensitive S. aureus bacteria or methicillin-resistant S. aureus bacteria, said method comprising the steps of: (a) obtaining nucleic acids from the nasal swab sample; (b) coamplifying a S. aureus -specific target sequence and a target sequence specific for methicillin resistance in an in vitro nucleic acid amplification reaction performed using nucleic acids obtained in step (a) as templates, wherein each of said target sequences is included among nucleic acids obtained in step (a), and wherein amplification products for both of said target sequences are produced and detected in the in vitro nucleic acid amplification reaction; (c) determining time-dependent indicia of amplification for the S. aureus -specific target sequence and for the target sequence specific for methicillin resistance that coamplified in step (b); (d) calculating a numerical value that is a function of both of said time-dependent indicia of amplification determined in step (c); and (e) establishing that (1) said biological sample contains methicillin-sensitive S. aureus bacteria if the numerical value calculated in step (d) is less than a threshold criterion value that distinguishes the coamplification kinetics of nucleic acids obtained from (i) methicillin-resistant S. aureus bacteria, and (ii) a mixture of methicillin-sensitive S. aureus bacteria and methicillin-resistant coagulase-negative bacteria, and (2) said biological sample contains methicillin-resistant S. aureus bacteria for all values of the numerical value calculated in step (d) that are greater than said threshold criterion value.