how long does mrsa live on surfaces

Once MRSA gets into households, the deadly superbug tin accept hold and spread easily, a study published Tuesday shows. And more often than not, the bacteria hitched rides into the homes on children.

Researchers plant that in households of people with a MRSA infection, the bacteria tin can be plant on surfaces including refrigerator handles, bath towels, light switches, video game controllers and even pets, according to the study in The Lancet Infectious Diseases. MRSA, or methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, is a bacterium that's resistant to several antibiotics, including methicillin.

"It's a hardy bacterium that lives on surfaces," said study coauthor, Dr. Stephanie Fritz, an acquaintance professor in the division of pediatric infectious diseases at Washington Academy in St. Louis. "People can pick it up and bring it dwelling and the business firm can become colonized."

Non long agone, MRSA infections were primarily associated with infirmary stays, but since the turn of the century, the bacteria have been turning upwardly in daily settings more ofttimes.

Before the late 1990s and early 2000s, the infection wasn't a problem outside of hospitals, said Dr. Graham Snyder, medical director of infection prevention at the Academy of Pittsburgh Medical Middle, who wasn't involved with the new research.

People can become infected with MRSA if the leaner enter the body through a intermission in the peel. Indeed, when people become MRSA outside of health care settings, the infections most often testify up as skin infections, co-ordinate to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Symptoms tin can include redness, swelling, pain and pus, and oftentimes, fever.

Snyder estimates that each year, around eleven,000 people dice from MRSA. If the infection spreads to the lungs, it can lead to pneumonia; if it gets into the bloodstream, information technology tin can lead to sepsis.

To learn more nearly how MRSA gets into homes and is then spread among the residents, Fritz and her colleagues focused on the households of 150 otherwise healthy St. Louis children, with an average age of three, who went to a doctor or a hospital because of a MRSA infection.

Fritz and her colleagues visited each home five times over the course of a yr and each time, they took samples from all family members' nostrils, armpits and groins, as well as from the noses and backs of any household cats and dogs. At the outset, they asked the study participants more than 100 questions most hygiene and personal habits.

The researchers found MRSA on near half the people and on 1-3rd of the pets at to the lowest degree once during the year. One surprising finding, Fritz said, was that it looked like people oftentimes were passing the bacteria on to their pets, rather than the other way around.

Some other surprise was the length of fourth dimension the leaner survived on surfaces. "In one household when we went the very get-go fourth dimension, nosotros were told the video game controller hadn't been touched in six months so we wouldn't need to swab that," Fritz said. "Nosotros swabbed it anyhow and recovered MRSA."

And while anyone can bring MRSA into the house, "we found children were more probable to exist bringing new strains into the house than adults," Fritz said.

Stopping the spread of MRSA

Despite the surprising findings, the researchers constitute that stopping the spread of MRSA could be accomplished with unproblematic practiced hygiene.

Indeed, the study found that the biggest protective factor against spreading MRSA was hand-washing, Fritz said. In households with a family member who had the infection, those who washed their hands with lather and water regularly were less likely to choice up the bacteria. MRSA was more probable to spread when people shared bedrooms, beds, towels or hygiene items such equally razors and toothbrushes with someone who carried the bacteria.

As the written report plant, the all-time way to avoid bringing MRSA into your dwelling is to wash your hands regularly, Snyder said. "For case, if you've been out and about in public doing errands and yous've been touching elevator buttons and grocery carts, you should wash your hands when you come up into the house," he said.

Another important factor was how make clean the home was, in terms of clutter, grime and olfactory property.

This means that keeping the house neat and tidy could be helpful to reduce the spread of MRSA bacteria, said Dr. Meghan Davis, an banana professor in the section of environmental health and engineering science at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

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Linda Carroll

Linda Carroll is a regular health contributor to NBC News and Reuters Health. She is coauthor of "The Concussion Crisis: Anatomy of a Silent Epidemic" and "Out of the Clouds: The Unlikely Horseman and the Unwanted Colt Who Conquered the Sport of Kings."