Trend determination of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infections with statistical modeling

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study is to analyze the situation of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in TRNC by examining the prevalence of Community-acquired Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA)/Hospital-acquired Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (HA-MRSA) cases, the acceleration of CA-MRSA/HA-MRSA patients from past to present, the impact of pandemic, gender and age on MRSA cases. METHODS: In order to analyze the trend of MRSA cases and the effects of selected parameters on MRSA cases, statistical tests are employed to the obtained data including ANOVA test, regression analysis tests and Post-hoc Tukey test. RESULTS: Incidence rate of MRSA carriage in the community has increased over the years to 45.6%. p-value of the relationship between community-acquired MRSA cases and hospital-acquired MRSA cases is less than 0.05. The results also revealed that the p-value of both the relationship between COVID-19 and MRSA cases and the relationship between 50+ age and MRSA cases are significant. On the other hand, p-value of the relationship between gender and MRSA cases is found to be greater than 0.05. CONCLUSION: It is concluded that MRSA carriage in the community has increased over the years and CA-MRSA and HA-MR- SA cases are related since p<0.05. Moreover, it's revealed that there is an effect of COVID-19 pandemic and 50+ age (66% of the cases) on MRSA cases because of p<0.05 while the gender is not an effect for MRSA cases in the country, since p-value for gender comparison is greater than 0.05.