Environmental, occupational, and medical exposures associated with methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus nasal carriage in patients admitted to an eastern North Carolina hospital
Public Deposited- Last Modified
- March 22, 2019
- Creator
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Schinasi, Leah Hope
- Affiliation: Gillings School of Global Public Health, Department of Epidemiology
- Abstract
- Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a versatile human pathogen. Originally acquired in medical settings, strains later emerged in the community and, most recently, within the context of industrial livestock production. Epidemiologic research on sources of MRSA acquisition and transmission is important for designing effective infection prevention measures. The objective of this work was to investigate medical, household, environmental, and occupational exposures associated with MRSA nasal carriage identified at admission among patients at a rural tertiary care hospital. I conducted a hospital based case control study at Vidant Medical Center (VMC), the largest hospital in eastern North Carolina, which is a region with intensive livestock production. VMC screens all admitted patients for MRSA using duplicate nasal swabs of the anterior nares. I interviewed 117 cases and 119 controls about occupational, household, and environmental exposures, abstracted information from medical charts, and used geographic mapping tools and publicly available data to estimate environmental exposures to livestock facilities. I used conditional logistic regression models to derive estimates of associations between MRSA carriage and medical, household, environmental, and occupational exposures. In this hospitalized population, community and household exposures were important predictors of MRSA carriage. Also, MRSA nasal carriage was associated with living near moderate densities of swine. This work represents an important baseline investigation and demonstrates the need for further research of environmental and occupational exposures that could be related to MRSA carriage with healthier populations.
- Date of publication
- December 2012
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- Rights statement
- In Copyright
- Advisor
- Wing, Steve
- Degree
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Graduation year
- 2012
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