Background:
The carrier state of methicillin-resistant
Staphylococcus aureus
is pointed as an infection predictor and a
factor for environmental and person-to-person dissemination, including health service workers. These, when colonized are
commonly associated to outbreaks.
Objective:
Analyze the prevalence of
Staphylococcus aureus in saliva of workers at a university hospital.
Methodology:
Epidemiologic longitudinal study carried out in Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil, with 486 workers between April
2006 and June 2008. Three saliva samples were collected and a data collection instrument was applied.
Staphylococcus aureus were isolated from the clinical specimen and characterized by phenotypes. The data from the instrument and the laboratory results were organized and processed with EPIInfo
software and analyzed via descriptive statistics.
Results:
Among the healthcare workers studied, 60.9%
were colonized by
Staphylococcus aureus in saliva; of those,
67.9% were transitory carriers and 32.1% were persistent
carriers; the prevalence of meticillin-resistant
Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) among the isolated cases was 15.7%. The
average prevalence of MRSA was 12.7% and higher among
nurses’ aides (21.4%) and cleaning aides (20.6%) and lower
among nurses (4.5%) and doctors (5.9%).
Conclusions:
Healthcare workers presented high
prevalence of
Staphylococcus aureus in saliva, indicating
the mouth as an important body site to investigate colonization
by MRSA and a potential source to its dissemination.
