rapid screening and identification of methicillinresistant staphylococcus aureus from clinical samples by selectivebroth and realtime pcr assay a screening method for methicillinresistant staphylococcus aureus mrsa by using selective broth and realtime pcr brothpcr was developed and evaluated the samples n 304 were cultured in the broth overnight followed by nuc gene detection by realtime pcr nucnegative samples were further checked for the presence of nuc amplification inhibitors by a pcr internal inhibitor assay nucpositive samples and nucnegative samples with pcr inhibitors were cultured onto plates and processed further the diagnostic values for this mrsa screening method were 933 sensitivity 896 specificity 318 positive predictive value and 996 negative predictive value the application of the brothpcr method will be able to report most of the negative samples 258 of 289 893 on the next morning and can save as much as 849 258 of 304 of the labor and cost spent on processing the nucnegative specimens on plates in the study all the samples were processed in parallel by the broth enrichment method and the plating method for comparison to identify mrsa the isolated oxacillinresistant s aureus strains were tested by a duplex realtime pcr targeting the meca gene and the nuc gene a collection of mrsa methicillinsusceptible staphylococcus aureus methicillinresistant staphylococcus epidermidis and methicillinsusceptible staphylococcus epidermidis strains and a panel of standard strains of 11 bacterial species other than s aureus were also tested by this method which was proved to be a valuable tool for mrsa identification in a routine microbiological laboratory