MRSA Notes

Related to the earlier article about the man who contracted MRSA on a sewage filled beach in Hawaii, is this article, which refutes the sewage theory in favor of the “lots of swimmers=lots of S. aureus” theory. Hmm. Wonder if this guy works for the state? From The Honolulu Advertiser:

It seems like common sense, and now science backs it up: If you swim in water with a lot of people, it appears you’re more likely to run into their disease-causing bacteria than at a beach with fewer people.Microbiologist Roger S. Fujioka, of the University of Hawai’i’s Water Resources Research Center, conducted studies on the water at beaches after doctors expressed concern that people were coming down with staph infections after swimming at popular beaches.

“There’s lots of people that go swimming in coastal water and come out with staph infections,” he said.

Fujioka tested the water for the bacterium that causes staph infections, Staphylococcus aureus, and found that the numbers compare nicely with the number of people at the beaches.

Busy Waikiki Beach, for example, showed about 20 staph bacteria per 100 milliliters of water. By contrast, the less congested beaches of the Wai’anae Coast showed between 0 and 5.

“It’s correlated with the density of swimmers,” he said.

Fujioka said it is clear that the staph counts are associated with swimmers, not with things like sewage spills.

“Thirty percent of people have staph bacteria on the skin or in their nose” and it seems from the results that those bacteria wash off and remain in the water for some time.

“We tracked it at Kuhio Beach, when people left the beach it (bacteria levels) dropped off, but it didn’t go away,” he said.

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