Prevalence and antibiotic sensitivity profiles of Staphylococcus aureus nasal carriage among preclinical and clinical medical students in a Malaysian university

Isabel Lim Fong; Efa Ezan Binti Abdul Razak; Janice Tham Jia Mei; Nurul Akmal Binti Safian; Ong Sheng Tian; Ng Poh Peng; Helmy Hazmi

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Prevalence and antibiotic sensitivity profiles of Staphylococcus aureus nasal carriage among preclinical and clinical medical students in a Malaysian university

Author: Isabel Lim Fong ¹ ; Efa Ezan binti Abdul Razak ² ; Janice Tham Jia Mei ² ; Nurul Akmal binti Safian ² ; Ong Sheng Tian ² ; Ng Poh Peng ³ ; Helmy Hazmi ⁴
Author Information

1. Department of Paraclinical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences (FMHS), Universiti Malaysia Sarawak
2. Medical Programme Year 3, FMHS, UNIMAS, Sarawak
3. Department of Pathology, FMHS, UNIMAS, Sarawak
4. Department of Community Medicine and Public Health, FMHS, UNIMAS, Sarawak
Publication Type:Journal Article
Keywords: Methicillin-resistant; Staphylococcus aureus; medical students; nasal
From:Malaysian Journal of Microbiology 2018;14(4):351-355
CountryMalaysia
Language:English
Abstract: Aims:Prevalence of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) strains in healthcare (HA-MRSA) and community (CA-MRSA) incurred costly morbidity and mortality. This study assessed the prevalence and antibiotic sensitivity profile of S. aureus and MRSA isolates from medical students.
Methodology and results:A cross-sectional study of nasal swabs from 60 medical students yielded 93% positive S. aureus. In this study, erythromycin, fusidic acid, gentamicin, penicillin, vancomycin and methicillin were used. The most significant antibiotic sensitivity against S. aureus was fusidic acid (p-value=0.0042). The S. aureus and MRSA isolates from clinical students were more resistant than those of preclinical students against erythromycin (44%; 15%), fusidic acid (33.3%; 10%), penicillin (85%; 86.9%), vancomycin (11.1%;-) and methicillin (19.4%; 15%) respectively while the isolates from preclinical students were more resistant than those of clinical students against gentamicin (5%;-).
Conclusion, significance and impact of study:In this study, gender, age and duration of clinical exposure had no significant bearing on the prevalence of nasal S. aureus and MRSA respectively. No MRSA infections were detected in preclinical (15%) and clinical (19%) students positive for MRSA, suggesting that these students may be carriers of CA-MRSA. A larger study will be implemented to provide baseline data for monitoring CA-MRSA infections, genotyping and constructing of phylogenetic tree.
Full text:20.2018my0463.pdf