Staphylococcus aureus is one of a major human pathogen which has long been implicated in some life threatening condition. It can cause community acquired and hospital acquired infections. The infection usually proceeds by colonization of S.aureus. In addition to that the risk of healthy individuals to get the infection from the carriers (community acquired) is increasing problem. So in order to insurance a good quality of patients care continuous and regular surveillance schedule is essential. The aim: to study the prevalence of S. aureus carrier frequency among students in Basra medical college and Basra dentistry college. A total of 100 nasal swabs were collected. 50 swabs were from Basra medical student (32 male and 18 female) and 50 swabs were from Basra Dentistry students (33 male and 17were female), were subjected to bacteriological investigation following standard protocol. S. aureus isolates were identified by mannitol fermentation and coagulase positivity. Highest nasal colonization rate was found among medical student (39.5%) while represented18.4% in dentistry students (P>0.05). Highest positive rate was observed among male than female and in clinical student than the pre clinical students of both college. Conclusion: These results indicate that both dentistry and medical students might have been contaminated with S.aureus during clinical practice which may act as a source of infection to the other individuals which. May leads to many complications like increase the rate of nosocomial infection and multiple drug resistance.
Keywords: Dentistry Students, Medical Students, Nasal Carrier, Staphylococcus Aureus
