The author reviews the published findings on the carriage of Staphylococcus pyogenes var. aureus during the last two decades, dealing mainly with observations made in British Commonwealth countries, Scandinavia and the USA. The importance of the role played by staphylococcal carriers in the spread of infection both in hospitals and among adults and children in the general population is clearly brought out and is of particular interest in view of the current increase in resistance of staphylococcal strains to antibiotics.There does not appear to have been any well-defined trend towards either an increase or a decrease in staphylococcal carriage in the past twenty years; annual variations have been quite considerable and the precipitate drop in the carriage rate in hospitals in 1949 (perhaps due to the extensive use of penicillin) has since been made up. A particularly high carriage rate was found among hospital staff and twice as high a rate among children born in hospitals as among those delivered at home.Closer study and better control of staphylococcal infections in hospital wards are clearly necessary. It is appreciated, however, that, before more effective control measures can be taken, there must be improvements in the present methods of sampling, in the testing of strains for pathogenicity and in other techniques.
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