Gastrointestinal colonization of meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus: an unrecognized burden upon hospital infection control

Background: Meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has become endemic in many healthcare settings. Aim: To analyse the incidence, risk factors, outcomes, and genomic relatedness of patients with newly diagnosed gastrointestinal colonization of MRSA. Methods: Epidemiology and genetic analysis by whole-genome sequencing (WGS) in a hospital network in Hong Kong. Findings: Between October 1st, 2015 and December 31st, 2018, a total of 919 (2.7%) of 34,667 patients had newly diagnosed gastrointestinal MRSA colonization by admission screening. The incidence was 0.67 ± 0.32 per 1000 patient-days per quarter. Including patients with gastrointestinal MRSA colonization, the overall burden of MRSA increased by 59.2%, with an addition of 4727 MRSA patient-days during the study period. Patients referred from residential care home for the elderly, with history of hospitalization in the past six months, and consumption of fluoroquinolones, cephalosporins, and proton-pump inhibitors in the preceding six months were found to be independent risk factors by multivariate analysis in the case-control analysis. The median survival of cases was significantly shorter than that of controls (860 vs 1507 days, P
Source: Current Awareness Service for Health (CASH) - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news