Evaluation of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Carriage and High Livestock Production Areas in North Carolina through Active Case Finding at a Tertiary Care Hospital

Beth J. Feingold, Kerri L. Augustino, Frank C. Curriero, Paras C. Udani and Keith M. Ramsey
Additional contact information
Beth J. Feingold: Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA
Kerri L. Augustino: Department of Infection Control, Vidant Medical Center, Greenville, NC 27834, USA
Frank C. Curriero: Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA
Paras C. Udani: Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Internal Medicine, The Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University, Greenville, NC 27834, USA
Keith M. Ramsey: Department of Infection Control, Vidant Medical Center, Greenville, NC 27834, USA

IJERPH, 2019, vol. 16, issue 18, 1-6

Abstract: Recent reports from the Netherlands document the emergence of novel multilocus sequence typing (MLST) types (e.g., ST-398) of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in livestock, particularly swine. In Eastern North Carolina (NC), one of the densest pig farming areas in the United States, as many as 14% of MRSA isolates from active case finding in our medical center have no matches in a repetitive sequence-based polymerase chain reaction (rep-PCR) library. The current study was designed to determine if these non-matched MRSA (NM-MRSA) were geographically associated with exposure to pig farming in Eastern NC. While residential proximity to farm waste lagoons lacked association with NM-MRSA in a logistic regression model, a spatial cluster was identified in the county with highest pig density. Using MLST, we found a heterogeneous distribution of strain types comprising the NM-MRSA isolates from the most pig dense regions, including ST-5 and ST-398. Our study raises the warning that patients in Eastern NC harbor livestock associated MRSA strains are not easily identifiable by rep-PCR. Future MRSA studies in livestock dense areas in the U.S. should investigate further the role of pig–human interactions.

Keywords: MRSA; MLST; rep-PCR; North Carolina; livestock; cluster detection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/18/3418/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/18/3418/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:16:y:2019:i:18:p:3418-:d:267233

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().