Investigation of bacteria in nursing students nasal Staphylococcus aureus

Staphylococcus aureus can cause hospital infections. Health staff plays a major role to cause in terms of nasal carriage hospital infections. In this regard, nasal S. aureus carriage is of great importance. The aim of this study is to investigate whether nursing students constitute a reservoir for hospital-acquired S. aureus infections and to which extent they exposure to colonization in terms of hospital-acquired S. aureus. For this aim, nasal swab samples were taken from 156 nursing students and 90 from the control group ?total 246 people- by sterile swab conventianal method. Mannitol salt agar was used for the isolation of strains the conventional method was used to identify test microorganisms. The antimicrobial susceptibility of isolates was determined by disk diffusion according to CLSI. Findings of the study and control groups were analyzed by chi-square test by statistical comparison. As a result of the study, a rate of %15.38 nasal carriage was detected for nursing students while a rate of %21.1 of carriage was detected in the control group.Meticillin resistant S. aureus (MRSA) wasn?t detected from nursing students and control group. Sensitivities of antibiotics which were used in this study were determined at various rates. As a result of the statistical analysis, a significant difference in favour of nursing students wasn?t detected in terms of the features of hospital-acquired isolates. As conclusion, it has been determined that nursing students didn?t constitute a reservoir for of S .aureus strains having antimicrobial resistance, slime production, ß hemolysis and crystal violet reaction features which belong to hospital-acquired isolates. Moreover, hospital-acquired S. aureus colonization wasn?t detected in samples taken from students. Key words: S. aureus, nursing students, nasal carriage, hospital-acquired infection