Community-Associated MRSA from the Indian Subcontinent

The emergence and global dissemination of multidrug-resistant Gram-negative bacteria from the Indian subcontinent has received much attention. Less attention, however, has been given to reports describing the emergence in the past 5 years of two community-associated meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) lineages from the Indian subcontinent—sequence types (ST)772 and ST22.

Evidence suggests that community-associated MRSA is increasing in prevalence in India with a recent multicentre study showing that 65% of community associated S. aureus are MRSA, and findings from another study showing that more than 70% of healthy carriers of S aureus harboured MRSA.