Aims: The aim of this study was to determine the rates of nasal carriage of Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) in patients undergoing hemodialysis and the susceptibilities to mupirocin and fusidic acid in patients with nasal carriage of S.aureus.
Methods: A total of 165 hemodialysis patients, 55 (33.3%) females and 109 (66.03%) males, were included in the study. Nasal swab samples obtained from the patients were inoculated on mannitol-salt agar (Beslab, Turkey) medium. The media were incubated in an oven at 37 °C for 72 hours. Methicillin resistance was determined on Mueller-Hinton agar medium with cefoxitin disk (Bioanalyse, Turkey) and mupirocin and fusidic acid susceptibilities were determined by disk diffusion method with the discs of these antibiotics (Bioanalyse, Turkey).
Results: S. aureus nasal carriage was detected in a total of 14 (8.48%) patients, 9 (5.45%) of whom had methicillin-sensitive S. aureus (MSSA) nasal carriage and 5 (3.03%) had methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) nasal carriage. Of a total of 5 MRSA strains, 1 was resistant to mupirocin and 1 was resistant to fusidic acid. Of a total of 9 MSSA strains, 2 were resistant to mupirocin and 2 were resistant to fusidic acid. It was determined that mupirocin and fusidic acid resistance was higher in MSSA strains.
Conclusion: In our study, the rate of S. aureus nasal carriage in hemodialysis patients was found to be low. In addition, the resistance rates of MSSA strains to mupirocin and fusidic acid, which are topical antibiotics that can be used in the eradication of S.aureus nasal carriage, were higher than the resistance rates of MRSA strains to mupirocin and fusidic acid. We think that planning the eradication of nasal carriage in dialysis patients according to mupirocin and fusidic acid susceptibility results will increase the eradication success.