IJERPH, Vol. 16, Pages 3418: Evaluation of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Carriage and High Livestock Production Areas in North Carolina through Active Case Finding at a Tertiary Care Hospital

IJERPH, Vol. 16, Pages 3418: Evaluation of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Carriage and High Livestock Production Areas in North Carolina through Active Case Finding at a Tertiary Care Hospital International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health doi: 10.3390/ijerph16183418 Authors: Beth J. Feingold Kerri L. Augustino Frank C. Curriero Paras C. Udani Keith M. Ramsey Recent reports from the Netherlands document the emergence of novel multilocus sequence typing (MLST) types (e.g., ST-398) of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in livestock, particularly swine. In Eastern North Carolina (NC), one of the densest pig farming areas in the United States, as many as 14% of MRSA isolates from active case finding in our medical center have no matches in a repetitive sequence-based polymerase chain reaction (rep-PCR) library. The current study was designed to determine if these non-matched MRSA (NM-MRSA) were geographically associated with exposure to pig farming in Eastern NC. While residential proximity to farm waste lagoons lacked association with NM-MRSA in a logistic regression model, a spatial cluster was identified in the county with highest pig density. Using MLST, we found a heterogeneous distribution of strain types comprising the NM-MRSA isolates from the most pig dense regions, including ST-5 and ST-398. Our study raises the warning that patients in Eastern NC harbor livestock associated MRSA strains are not easily iden...
Source: International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health - Category: Environmental Health Authors: Tags: Communication Source Type: research