A quarter of serious cases of MRSA in hospitals are found in patients who have just arrived, researchers have said.
A quarter of serious cases of MRSA in hospitals are found in patients who have just arrived, researchers have said
Rates of the MRSA superbug have soared in the last decade, with hospital cleanliness largely blamed for helping infection to spread.
Now research has found that in many cases patients are bringing the bug into hospital with them, creating the potential for it to spread further, according to a study in the British Medical Journal.
The research looked at cases of methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus(MRSA) and methicillin sensitive Staphylococcus aureus(MSSA) bacteraemia in patients arriving at two Oxfordshire hospitals between 1997 and 2003.
These were the John Radcliffe, Radcliffe Infirmary and Churchill Hospitals, which operate as one teaching hospital, and the Horton Hospital in nearby Banbury.
The researchers, from the University of Oxford, found in the teaching hospitals that patients admitted from the community accounted for 49 per cent of total MSSA cases and about 25 per cent of MRSA bacteraemia cases.
The team found that the proportion of resistance to the antibiotic methicillin among patients admitted with MRSA increased 14 per cent in 1997 and 1998 to 26 per cent in 2003.
At least 91 per cent of patients who were admitted with MRSA bacteraemia had previously been in hospital, and half had never had MRSA detected before.