Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus among patients in a teaching hospital in Ghana

Research Article

International Journal of One Health, 3: 46-49

https://doi.org/10.14202/IJOH.2017.46-49

Akosua Bonsu Karikari¹, Enoch Frimpong², and Alex Owusu-Ofori²

1. Department of Clinical Microbiology, University for Development Studies, Tamale, Ghana.
2. Department of Clinical Microbiology, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana.

Background and Aim: This study determined the prevalence of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and assessed the resistance profiles of strains.

Materials and Methods: Inpatients and outpatients of all age groups presenting with sepsis as well as skin and soft tissue infections were screened from October 2006 to March 2007. Resistance to methicillin (oxacillin) and other relevant antibiotics was determined by the Kirby-Bauer disk diffusion and minimum inhibitory concentration (MICs) by the E-test (AB, Biodisk, Solna, Sweden).

Results: Methicillin resistance was 34.8% (87/250), majority (67/87) of which were hospital acquired MRSA. Resistance was 100% to the β-lactams, 78.2% to cotrimoxazole, 75.8% to tetracycline, 59.8% to gentamicin, 56.3% to flucloxacillin, 34.4% to erythromycin, and 32.2% to cefuroxime. MIC ranged from 4-256, 0.125-256, 0.064-32, and 1.5-32, respectively, to oxacillin, gentamicin, cotrimoxazole, and ceftriaxone.

Conclusion: Prevalence of MRSA is high in Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital, and routine surveillance should be put in place to monitor the epidemiology of this pathogen. Keywords: antibiotic resistance, Ghana, Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.

Keywords: antibiotic resistance, Ghana, Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.

How to cite this article: Karikari AB, Frimpong E, Owusu-Ofori A. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus among patients in a teaching hospital in Ghana. Int J One Health 2017;3:46-49.

Received: 10-05-2017 Accepted: 25-06-2017 Published online: 25-07-2017

Corresponding author: Akosua Bonsu Karikari E-mail: asbuks@yahoo.co.uk

DOI: 10.14202/IJOH.2017.46-49

Copyright: Karikari and Frimpong This article is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.