Brief report
Low methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus carriage rate among Italian dental students

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajic.2015.08.008Get rights and content

We assessed methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) carriage rate among dental students from an Italian university. A total of 157 subjects participated (67 preclinical students and 90 clinical students); samples were collected from the nose, mouth, and skin. Five preclinical students and 0 clinical students were MRSA-positive. Carriage rates were 3.2% (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.4%-6.0%) overall, 7.5% (95% CI, 1.2%-13.8%) in preclinical students and 0% in clinical students. There were 2 MRSA clusters among the preclinical students: 3 second-year and 2 first-year students, who sat close to one another in the classroom the day of the sample. MRSA carriage was not associated with dental health care. The pooled carriage rate among dental students was assessed to obtain a reliable figure of carriage rate unaffected by local conditions. The 4 published surveys were pooled, and the fixed-effects method was used. Among the 484 dental students, the pooled carriage rate was 4.1% (95% CI, 2.4%-5.8%).

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Methods

In this cross-sectional study, all dental students from the Sapienza University of Rome were invited to participate. Samples were collected in classrooms. To increase the likelihood of detecting carriers, 3 samples were collected from each subject. A subject was classified as a carrier when at least 1 sample tested positive. In accordance with previous studies,7, 9 to assess whether dental health care was associated with MRSA occurrence within the sample under investigation, the sample was

Results

A total of 157 students (mean age, 22.6 ± 3.2 years; 46.5% males) participated (participation rates: 59.0% overall, 63.2% in preclinical students, and 56.3% in clinical students). There were 67 subjects in the preclinical group (mean age, 20.8 ± 1.7 years; 43.3% males) and 90 subjects in the clinical group (mean age, 24.0 ± 3.3 years; 48.9% males).

Overall, S aureus was detected in 24 subjects, and MRSA was detected in 5 subjects (carriage rate, 3.2%) (Table 1). Five preclinical students and no

Discussion

This study was performed in an area where MRSA was probably sporadic. Indeed, carriage rates in the general population, such as medical patients (0.2%; 95CI, 0.01-1.4%)21 and biomedical students (0.0%; 95% CI, 0.0-4.4%)13 from the same Italian university hospital, were very low. In this situation, MRSA distribution among students was not normal and followed a cluster distribution typical of sporadic diseases.22 Indeed, there were 2 clusters of MRSA-positive subjects, one among first-year

References (25)

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