Browsing by Author "Melkamu, Getachew"

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    Vaginal Colonization Rate of Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus Among Pregnant Women Attending Antenatal Clinic: Ayder Teaching and Referral Hospital, Mekelle, Tigray, Ethiopia.
    (Addis Ababa University, 2012-06) Melkamu, Getachew; Dr. Asrat, Daniel (MD, M.Sc, PhD); Dr.W/Amanuel, Yimtubezinash (MD, M.Sc, PhD)
    Background: Early epidemiological studies indicated that 5% of women were colonized with Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) in their genital tract. Postpartum women had the highest colonization rates. Studies, mostly from United States have reported that vaginal colonization rates for S. aureus in pregnant women range from 14% to 17.1% and it is the major cause of surgical site infection. It was also indicated that between 25% and 50% of women undergone cesarean section develop post surgical site infections because of S. aureus. Objective: The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of genital tract colonization of S. aureus and MRSA among pregnant women at Ayder teaching and referral hospital of Mekelle University. Methods: A cross sectional study was carried out from December, 2011 and February, 2012 using non probable convenient sampling technique for screening vaginal cultures for S. aureus obtained from 190 pregnant women (at and greater than 24 weeks of gestation) and were processed for identification of S. aureus including methicillin- resistant strains. Results: From 190 pregnant women culture result was available from 184 pregnant women with culture data in the study and of these 43 (23.4%) were colonized with S. aureus. Out of the 43 isolates, 12 (27.9%) were MRSA positive. The antimicrobial susceptibility pattern for 43 S. aureus of the isolates showed 100 % resistant to ampicillin , amoxycillin , and penicillin followed by high resistance to tetracycline (83.7%), erythromycin (41.9%), oxacillin (27.9%), ciprofloxacilin (18.6%), gentamicin (4.6%), and to vancomycin (2.3%). Multi-resistance to two or more antimicrobial agents was observed in 100% of all tested S. aureus. Conclusion and recommendation: This study provided data on the vaginal carriage rate of MRSA and initial information on the antibacterial resistance pattern in S. aureus obtained from randomly selected pregnant women. In our results, high level of MRSA and multi drug resistance was observed. Therefore, we recommend that additional studies with more epidemiologic tools are needed to further asses the role of S. aureus and MRSA colonization in pregnant women in this study area.