A new German study suggests that it’s worth being extra careful with hygiene at airports because toilet doors at some hubs could be harbouring the killer superbug MRSA.
Researchers found that the drug resistant bacteria could be transferred between travellers on airport toilet door handles and then spread to different destinations across the world.
The study focused specifically on internal toilet doors as they are “frequently used by multiple people after potentially unhygienic activities (eg, defecation and urination) and are mostly contaminated with the flora of the skin and the gut.”
Scientists from Germany’s University Hospital Munster and Robert Koch Institute asked 39 travellers to swab 400 bathroom door handles at 136 airports in 59 countries, between December 2012 and November last year.
Men’s toilets were targeted more frequently than women’s (60 percent versus 39.5 percent) with samples taken on arrival (16 percent) before departure (80.7 percent) or in transit (2.75 percent). Researchers then took the swabs back to a lab.
The study, which was authored by Frieder Schaumburg and published in the medical journal Clinical Microbiology and Infection, found that contamination rates were highest for Staphylococcus aureus, which can cause a variety of infections from sore throats to meningitis, and was recorded on 5.5 percent of the samples.
This was followed by Stenotrophomonas maltophilia (two percent) which is naturally resistant to a number of antibiotics and Acinetobacter baumannii complex in 1.3 percent.
In the samples S.aureus was recorded as slightly more common on airport handles in Africa (7.7 percent) than in South American (6.5 percent), Europe (5.5 percent), North America (4.7 percent) and Asia (4.7 percent).
An example of how easily drug resistant bacteria can hitch a ride with travellers was seen in one batch of methicillin-resistant s.aureus (MRSA) which was detected in Paris and matched a “community-associated MRSA clone” found in India.
MRSA means “methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.” It is a specific “staph” bacteria that is often resistant to methicillin and several types of antibiotic treatments.
In general, healthy people with no cuts, abrasions, or breaks on their skin are at low risk for getting infected.
Like common S. aureus (SA), MRSA may cause life-threatening infections in some people. But because it is resistant to commonly used antibiotics, it can be harder to treat or become worse if the right treatment is delayed.
MRSA is one of the bacteria listed by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as a “superbug” resistant to multiple antibiotics.
Read more: http://www.caribbean360.com/travel/superbug-travel-world-via-contact-airports#ixzz4SABpe7Tz
