TABLE 1.
Association between virulence gene markers of S. aureus strains cultured at inclusion of patients in a randomized placebo controlled study on the efficacy of fusidic acid and clinical and demographic features of children with impetigoa
| Characteristic | SEC | SED | SEE | ETA | ETB | TSST | BIN 1 (PVL) | BIN 2 (hyp. gene) | BIN 4 (pSK41) | BIN 8 (hyp. gene) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Age (yr) | 2.8-5.5 (<0.001) | 6.8-4.2 (<0.001) | 6.1-4.3 (0.001) | 5.9-4.2 (0.002) | ||||||
| Duration (days) at first visit | 13.8-8.7 (0.02) | |||||||||
| No. of lesions | 17.7-9.9 (0.002) | 15.4-10.1 (0.03) | 15.9-8.8 (0.003) | |||||||
| Surface area of lesion (cm2) | 11.6-3.9 (<0.001) | 9.3-4.2 (0.001) | 8.7-4.0 (0.003) | |||||||
| Lymphadenopathy (% of patients) | 100-39 (0.03) | 20-53% (0.003) | 73-37 (0.03) | 30-51 (0.04) | ||||||
| Temp (°C) | 36.1-36.6 (0.01) | |||||||||
| % Patients with: | ||||||||||
| Encrustation | 95-80 (0.03) | |||||||||
| Pustules | 41-16 (0.02) | 75-18 (0.02) | 12-26 (0.05) | 50-17 (0.03) | ||||||
| Lesions on trunk | 51-24 (0.005) | 31-80 (0.04) | ||||||||
| Family members or peers infected | 35-12 (0.005) | |||||||||
| Home in an old house | 100-34 (0.03) | |||||||||
| Kindergarten attendance | 5-27 (0.005) | 6-31 (0.001) | ||||||||
| Kindergarten attendance and age >4 yr | 53-80 (0.02) | 25-78 (0.04) | 87-70 (0.05) | 85-66 (0.02) | ||||||
| Swimming participation | 68-46 (0.03) | 27-57 (0.03) | 62-43 (0.04) |
Data are for 98 combinations of completely typed S. aureus strains together with a full complement of patient information. The pairs of figures listed indicate the average value of the parameters investigated for the patients harboring strains including the markers versus those that did not. In the case of the number of lesions, for instance, the average number of lesions was 17.7 for patients infected with ETB-positive strains, whereas for patients infected with an ETB-negative strains the number of lesions averaged 9.9. Only statistically significant figures are included. No association with any of the listed disease parameters was found for the genes encoding enterotoxins A and B and hemolysins A, B, and C and for and BIN probes 2, 3, 5 to 7, 11, 14, and 15, Pairs of figures indicate the probe-positive (left) versus the probe-negative (right) results. P values are given in parentheses. For boldface P values, significance was retained upon exclusion of the clone 8 PFGE types of S. aureus. PVL, Panton-Valentine leukocidin; pSK41, multiresistance-encoding plasmid pSK41; hyp. gene, hypothetical gene segment; SEC, SED, and SEE, enterotoxins C, D, and E, respectively; TSST, toxic shock syndrome toxin.