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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
Aims: The main goal was to estimate the prevalence of methicillin-resistant
Staphylococcus aureus on hands and in nose of health care professionals.
Methods and Results: Detection of Staph. aureus on hands or in the nose of
169 individuals was performed. Nasal and hand carriage was found in 39 6 and
in 8 9% respectively. About 17 2% of the individuals were carriers of
methicillin-resistant Staph. aureus (MRSA) in the nose and 4 7% on hands.
The majority of nasal MRSA were resistant to b-lactams, erythromycin and
ciprofloxacin. All nasal MRSA were SCCmec type IV and Panton-Valentine
leukocidin (PVL) negative. One MRSA isolated from hand was SCCmec type
V. About 75 6% of MRSA isolates presented the same or closely related
restriction patterns. Sixty per cent of Staph. aureus from hands and from noses
from the same individual were the same strain.
Conclusions: MRSA nasal carriage was high considering healthy health care
professionals but in accordance with high level of MRSA infection in Portugal.
Isolates recovered in this study seemed to be different from major clones
previously isolated in other Portuguese hospitals.
Significance and Impact of the Study: These findings may have implications
on the knowledge of healthy health care workers as vehicles of MRSA
infections among the community. Presence of several virulence factors may
contribute to increased pathogenesis in case of infection.
Description
Keywords
Antimicrobial resistance Enterotoxin genes Hand carriage Health care professionals Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus Nasal carriage Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis
Citation
CASTRO, A.; KOMORA, N.; FERREIRA, Vânia; LIRA, A.; MOTA, M.; SILVA, Joana; TEIXEIRA, Paula - Prevalence of staphylococcus aureus from nares and hands on health care professionals in a portuguese hospital. Journal of Applied Microbiology. ISSN 1365-2672. Vol. 121, n.º 3 (2016), p. 831-839