Evaluation of prevalence of low and high level mupirocin resistance in methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus isolates at a tertiary care hospital.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the trend of mupirocin resistance in MRSA, isolated at the Clinical Microbiology Laboratory of a tertiary care hospital. METHODS A total of 200 MRSA strains recovered over a 2 year period from various body sites were tested using the 5 and 200 microg discs of mupirocin to detect its resistance. RESULTS High level and low level mupirocin resistance were detected in zero and 1% of MRSA strains, respectively. Resistance to other non beta lactam antibiotics was also high. No MRSA strains were found to be resistant to vancomycin and tegicycline. CONCLUSION Mupirocin resistance was found to be very low among local clinical isolates of MRSA. Its judicious use to decolonize nasal carriers should be promoted among hospitalized patients to avoid further transmission and infections due to prevalent endemic MRSA strains in any health care setting. Concomitantly, regular surveillance and effective infection control initiatives are desirable to reduce the incidence of health care associated infections due to MRSA and also of mupirocin resistance.