The intranasal antibiotic ointment mupirocin cuts surgical Staphylococcus aureus infection rates at least in half, according to an article in the June 13 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Iowa conducted a study to determine whether intranasal treatment with mupirocin reduces the rate of S. aureus infections at surgical sites and prevents other nosocomial infections.
A total of 4,030 adult patients who underwent elective surgical procedures received an application of mupirocin or a placebo inside their nostrils twice a day for up to five days after surgery. Researchers followed patients for 30 days after surgery to determine if they acquired S. aureus infections.
Overall, 2.3 percent of the mupirocin recipients and 2.4 percent of the placebo recipients developed S. aureus infections at surgical sites. Among subjects who carried the infection in their nasal passages, however, 4.0 percent who received mupirocin had nosocomial S. aureus infections, compared with 7.7 percent of those who received a placebo.
Researchers concluded that intranasal application of mupirocin did not significantly reduce the rate of S. aureus surgical-site infections overall, but it did significantly decrease the rate of all nosocomial infections among subjects who were S. aureus carriers.
Researchers also looked at resistant and nonresistant strains of S. aureus and found that short, carefully planned mupirocin treatment like that used in the study did not appear to contribute to antibiotic resistance.
