When a person is discharged from a hospital, it’s usually a happy moment — but not if they’re bringing an antibiotic-resistant superbug home with them. That’s the case for many patients, a new study finds.
In fact, family members of recently discharged patients were 71 times more likely to get a methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection when their loved one returns home, compared with those who didn’t have a family member hospitalized, the study found. The longer the person was hospitalized, the higher the risk was for those who lived with them, even if the patient never had MRSA, according to an Aug. 7 report in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology.
MRSA infections don’t respond to common antibiotics, so they’re hard to treat. The infection can be fatal if it gets into the lungs or bloodstream.
Investigators assessed insurance claims from nearly 158 million enrollees with two or more family members, spotting more than 424,000 MRSA cases among approximately 343,000 people. Of those with MRSA 4,724 represented a possible transmission of MRSA after an MRSA diagnosis of another family member, while 8,064 represented possible transmission of MRSA that occurred after hospitalization of another family member.
Family members of a loved one who was recently hospitalized but didn’t have MRSA had a 44% higher risk for contracting MRSA than people who were hospitalized or exposed to a family member with MRSA.
Staying from one to three days in a hospital was linked to a 34% higher risk of MRSA among family members at home, while being hospitalized for four to 10 days raised the risk to 49% and staying more than 10 days increased the risk by 70% to 80%, the data showed.
“Patients can become colonized with MRSA during their hospital stay and transmit MRSA to their household members,” Aaron Miller, PhD, lead author and a research assistant professor of internal medicine-infectious diseases at the University of Iowa, said in an article on HealthDay.
“This suggests hospitals contribute to the spread of MRSA into the community through discharged patients who are asymptomatic carriers,” Miller added.
