Intestinal bacteria end up on bed rail

CLEVELAND, Sept. 14 (UPI) -- Staphylococcus aureus in patients’ stools is more likely to end up on skin, hospital bed rails and other surfaces, a U.S. study found.

Curtis Donskey and colleagues from the Cleveland Veterans Affairs Medical Center collected stool samples from patients and analyzed them for S. aureus. The researchers also took samples from the patients’ nostrils, armpits and groins, as well as surrounding surfaces such as bed rails and bedside tables.

The study, published in the journal, BMC Infectious Diseases, found that patients harboring S. aureus in both their intestines and noses were significantly more likely than those with the bacterium in their nostrils alone to have positive skin cultures.

Cultures from environmental surfaces yielded an average of 12.7 colonies with a range of 1 to 80, while cultures from armpits and groins yielded colonies of bacteria “too numerous to count.” Most of the patients colonized with Staphylococcus aureus had the Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA strain, which cannot be treated with certain antibiotics.