Carriage of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in children in Brazil.
The extent of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) carriage in Brazilian infants is largely unknown. We evaluated the presence of MRSA nasopharyngeal (NP) carriage in 686 children younger than 5 years with respiratory tract infection (609) and meningitis (77). S. aureus was isolated in 93 (13.5%) NP specimens of which 7 (1.02%) were identified as MRSA (oxacillin MIC, >256 microg/mL) harboring SCCmec type III. The dendrogram derived from the pulsed-field gel electrophoresis gel images showed that the MRSA strains diverged from the Brazilian endemic hospital-acquired clones from 10.4% to 21.7%. Although the MRSA strains were recovered from children within the first 6 h of their admission to hospital, the presence of SCCmec type III along with the multidrug-resistant profile of the isolates raises the hypotheses that these MRSA strains may have hospital origin and are now spreading into the pediatric community as colonizing pathogens.
Lamaro-Cardoso
Juliana
J
Instituto de Patologia Tropical e Saúde Pública, Universidade Federal de Goiás, Goiânia-Goiás 74605-050, Brazil.
Castanheira
Mariana
M
de Oliveira
Renato Mauricio
RM
e Silva
Simonne Almeida
SA
Pignatari
Antonio Carlos Campos
AC
Mendes
Rodrigo Elisandro
RE
Pimenta
Fabiana Cristina
FC
Andrade
Ana Lúcia Sampaio Sgambatti
AL
D001938:Brazil / Q000453:epidemiology; D002353:Carrier State / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000382:microbiology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D006801:Humans; D016920:Meningitis, Bacterial / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000382:microbiology; D016106:Methicillin Resistance; D009305:Nasopharynx / Q000382:microbiology; D012141:Respiratory Tract Infections / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000382:microbiology; D013203:Staphylococcal Infections / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000382:microbiology; D013211:Staphylococcus aureus / Q000187:drug effects / Q000302:isolation & purification*