By Ben Butkus

The US Food and Drug Administration has cleared Roche Molecular System's LightCycler MRSA Advanced Test for detecting methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus for clinical use in the US, Roche said this week.

Roche's test becomes the third PCR-based MRSA test approved for clinical use in the US, joining Cepheid's Xpert MRSA/SA nasal assay for its GeneXpert PCR platform; and Becton Dickinson's GeneOhm MRSA assay, which runs on Cepheid's SmartCycler platform.