Prevalence of methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus in nasal samples from preclinical second-year medical students.

In other studies, around 40% of preclinical medical students were colonized with Staphylococcus aureus but none were MRSA. This study was conducted to determine the level of S. aureus and MRSA in the nares of second year medical students. Over 47% of the student samples contained S. aureus. Five percent of S. aureus isolates possessed the mecA gene. Medical students in this study had a higher percent colonization with S. aureus and MRSA than previous studies.