Prevalence and Antibiotic Susceptibility Patterns of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) Isolated from Some Communities and Hospitals in Nsukka, Nigeria

Abstract

IntroductionStaphylococcus aureus is a Gram-positive bacterium capable of infecting virtually every tissue of the body and causing infections ranging from minor skin infections to life-threatening infections, such as bacteremia, endocarditis, necrotizing pneumonia and toxic shock syndrome (TSS). S. aureus is a major cause of health care associated infections, estimated to be responsible for 13.8 per 100 hospitalizations in US hospitals in (Klein et al., 2007. Staphylococcal infection remains a major health challenge in several countries, with huge resultant adverse effect ranging to lifethreatening diseases such pneumonia, bacteremia to high mortality cases (Asadollahi et al., 2018). The increasing prevalence of antibiotic resistant S. aureus, has emerged as a serious public health issue both in the hospital and community settings . Initially, treatment of Staphylococcus aureus infections in the 1940s involved a beta-lactam antibiotic, penicillin (Geddes, 2008). However, by the end of the 1940s, 50% of Staphylococcus aureus strains were resistant to penicillin in the USA (Lowy, 1998). In 2002, 90% of Staphylococcus aureus strains isolates found in hospitals worldwide were resistant to penicillin (Greenwood et al., 2002). Methicillin, a semisynthetic penicillin, was introduced in 1960 as an alternative to penicillin therapy for the treatment of Staphylococcus aureus infection (Chambers, 2001). However, the identification of methicillin -resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) strains was reported in 1961, within a year after its introduction as an anti-staphylococcal drug (Lowy, 2003).