Japanese Society for Infection Prevention and Control-Online Journal

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Article in Japanese

Infection Control and Prevention of MRSA

Shigeki NAKAMURA
Department of Microbiology, Tokyo Medical University

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has spread worldwide since the 1960s and is still one of the most important causative pathogens of health care-associated and community-acquired infections about 60 years later. Since 2000, the disease burden of MRSA due to the practice of multifaceted intervention has been decreasing year by year compared to multidrug-resistant Gram-negative bacteria, although it varies slightly depending on the infection control and regional characteristics of epidemic clones. However, the ratio of MRSA to S. aureus in Japan has stopped declining at around 50%, and the reasons for this are an increase in the spread of community-acquired MRSA in the hospital and an increase in the number of hospital-acquired MRSA carriers in the community, making it difficult for each medical institution to complete infection control against MRSA alone. MRSA infections range from asymptomatic carriers to soft skin tissue infections to fatal invasive infections. The basics of MRSA infection control are identification of infection sources and blocking of infection routes (standard precaution and contact precaution), appropriate use of antimicrobials (including antibody MRSA drugs), and appropriate support/intervention for high-risk patients. It is important to grasp the trends in the entire region and cooperate with each other to implement infection control measures.

Key words：MRSA, standard precaution, contact precaution, health care-associated infection, appropriate use of antimicrobials

e-mail: shigenak＠tokyo-med.ac.jp

Received: May 23, 2022
Accepted: July 7, 2022

37 (6)：217─226,2022