“…The wall teichoic acid of S. aureus is a ribitol-phosphate polymer substituted with 01-and P-linked N-acetylglucosamine residues which are the main antigenic determinants (Sanderson, Strominger and Nathenson, 1962;Torii, Kabat and Bezer, 1964). Cross-reactions can be expected in TAA assay, because many gram-positive and also some gram-negative bacteria have structures that are antigenically similar to 'those of the ribitol teichoic acids of S. aureus (Juergens, Sanderson and Strominger, 1963;Brundish and Baddiley, 1968;Kane and Karakawa, 1969;Aasen and Oeding, 1971;Argaman, Liu and Robbins, 1974;Gmeiner et al, 1977). In practice, however, false positive TAA test results have been fairly uncommon (Crowder and White, 1972;Larinkari et al, 1977, Leffell, Folds andWasilauskas, 1978;Martin, Greenberg and Wallace, 1979).…”