Characterization of coagulase-positive Staphylococcus intermedius and Staphylococcus aureus isolated from veterinary clinical specimens.

Staphylococci were the most frequent isolates from clinical specimens submitted from a large referral and teaching veterinary hospital. In this study a total of 160 isolates were examined by a wide range of biochemical tests and modifications of basic procedures. An attempt was made to test the validity of these procedures for use in characterization of clinical isolates of coagulase-positive staphylococci. Of the isolates examined, some 27 were Staphylococcus aureus, 115 were Staphylococcus intermedius, and the rest were coagulase-negative staphylococci and were not characterized further. The most useful discriminatory tests were acid production from maltose incubated overnight on maltose purple agar (W. E. Kloos and K. H. Schleifer, J. Clin. Microbiol., 1:82-88, 1975), acetoin production detected by the Barritt method, and detection of hyaluronidase activity. These gave accurate and fast results. Supplemented with the tellurite reduction test and the direct staphylocoagulase assay using Chromozym TH (Engels et al.; J. Clin. Microbiol. 14:496-500, 1981), these tests should eliminate the possibility of false identifications of these two species.