Staphylococcus aureus is a major bacterial pathogen that causes different community and hospital-acquired infections. The sources of infection include patients, healthy carriers and animals. The physicians and nurses that have staphylococcal wounds on their hands or around the nails, in nose and mouth may be the source of new infection for their patients. In this study, 240 samples (53.33% male and 46.66% female) were taken from oropharynx and nasopharynx of patients, nurses, cooks and administrative staff in Roudbar Hospitals (Northern Iran), and identified with tests such as coagulase and culture in blood and mannitol salt agar medium. 82 (31.25% male and 37.5% female) clinical isolates of S. aureus were collected. All positive cultures which yielded S. aureus underwent antimicrobial susceptibility testing using the Kirby-Bauer disk diffusion method on Mueller-Hinton agar. The results were interpreted after 24 hours of incubation at 37°C. The prevalence of S. aureus higher in nurses (66.66%), administrative staff (37.5%) and cooks (30%), as compared to patients. The most and the least positive cases belong to 11-20 (50%) and 51-60 (41.66%) year age groups, respectively. The overall, 100% of S. aureus strains were resistant to ampicillin and 92.68% to penicillin, while 92.68% sensitive to co-trimoxazole, 90.24% to ciprofloxacin, vancomycin and gentamicin. Overall, conducting similar researches in other remedial centers of our country and summarizing them can help to determine bacterial prevalence and antibiotic susceptibility pattern in S. aureus considerably in Iran. It is not necessary to use antibiotics in order to treat many diseases and arbitrary use of antibiotics should be avoided seriously.
Staphylococcus aureus, Antibiotic Resistance, Susceptibility, Nosocomial Infection
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