CHROMagar™ Staph aureus (MRSA)

Product information

Staphylococcus aureus is a major pathogenic bacterium found in clinical specimens and in food industry products. Staph. aureus is a commensal human germ (50% of the population hosting S.aureus) but can be an opportunistic agent due to its pyogenic and toxinogenic behaviour. It represents a major public health problem.

1. Easy to read: compared to Blood Agar, CHROMagar Staph aureus allows easy differentiation of mauve from blue or white colonies and is of considerable help in identifying suspect colonies.


2. Higher sensitivity (exceeds 99%*) than Blood Agar, especially in specimens heavily loaded with gram negative flora competing with and inhibiting S.aureus. *Specificity and sensibility from scientific study: “Evaluation of CHROMagar Staph aureus, a new chromogenic medium, for isolation and presumptive identification of Staphylococcus aureus from human clinical specimens.” Gaillot O. et al. 2001. Journal of Clinical Microbiology, 38: 1587-1591. 


3. Better selectivity and sensitivity compared to the conventional media, Mannitol Salt Agar (called Chapman Agar in Europe), which is showing an excessive rate of false positives and of false negatives. 


4. Lower workload: Blood Agar, another conventional medium for detecting Staphylococcus aureus, requires tedious and costly examination with immunological tests of 5-10 colonies per suspected sample. With CHROMagar Staph aureus, testing a single colony with typical colour for further identification will generally be sufficient for high probability detection of Staphylococcus aureus.