Competition of hospital-acquired and community-acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus strains in hospitals

Abstract

Recently, we [E.M.C. D'Agata, G.F. Webb, M.A. Horn, R.C. Moellering Jr., and S. Ruan, Modelling the invasion of community-acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus into the hospital setting, Clin. Infect. Dis. 48 (2009), pp. 274–284] proposed a deterministic mathematical model to characterize the factors contributing to the replacement of hospital-acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (HA-MRSA) with the community-acquired MRSA (CA-MRSA) and to quantify the effectiveness of interventions aimed at limiting the spread of CA-MRSA in the hospital setting. Numerical simulations of the model strongly suggest that CA-MRSA will become the dominant MRSA strain in the hospital setting. In this companion paper, we provide steady-state analysis and more numerical simulations of the model. It is shown that when no colonized or infected patients enter the hospital, competitive exclusion of HA-MRSA by CA-MRSA will occur with increased severity of CA-MRSA infections resulting in longer hospitalizations and a larger in-hospital reservoir of CA-MRSA. Improving compliance with hand hygiene and decolonization of CA-MRSA carriers are effective control strategies.