Treatment with mupirocin, an antibiotic used to treat skin infections and to eradicate MRSA from the nasal passages in order to prevent its spread from sneezes, is weakly associated with mupirocin resistance in the household environment.
In the study, the investigators collected samples from the home environments and companion animals of households enrolled in a large randomized controlled trial, which took place over a 14 month period. They tested whether household-wide efforts to eradicate MRSA -- which included daily use of nasal mupirocin ointment and chlorhexidine body wash -- were successful in reducing recurrence of MRSA among adults and children who had previously been diagnosed with a MRSA skin or soft tissue infection. They repeated sampling in 65 homes three months after the residents had been treated for MRSA, or, as a control, after they had been educated about MRSA.
The investigators concluded that a better understanding of what causes home environmental MRSA to become multidrug resistant, and thus harder to treat, could help in identifying which households are more likely to harbor multidrug resistant MRSA, so that these could be targeted for eradication of the pathogen.
See:
J. H. Shahbazian, P. D. Hahn, S Ludwig, J Ferguson, P Baron, A Christ, K Spicer, P Tolomeo, A. M. Torrie, W. B. Bilker, V. C. Cluzet, B Hu, K Julian, I Nachamkin, S. C. Rankin, D. O. Morris, E Lautenbach, M. F. Davis. Multidrug and mupirocin resistance in environmental methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) collected from the homes of people diagnosed with a community-onset (CO-) MRSA infection. Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 2017; AEM.01369-17 DOI: 10.1128/AEM.01369-17
Posted by Dr. Tim Sandle
