The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that Black and Hispanic dialysis patients are 40% more likely to develop a staph infection, a dangerous bloodstream infection, than white people.

A report by the health agency noted that the rate of staph infections among Black or Hispanic patients is higher due to a lower socioeconomic status. More than half a million Americans rely on regular dialysis treatments to filter dangerous toxins from their blood because their kidneys are no longer able to work as they should.

High Rate of Staph Infection

On top of this, the process relies on using catheters and needles that circulate a patient's blood through a machine to filter it. The acting principal deputy director of the CDC, Dr. Debra Houry, said that germs such as staph could enter a person's bloodstream via these access points.

In a news briefing on Monday, she noted that these infections could be serious and fatal, and some can be resistant to some of the most common antibiotics that professionals use to treat them, as per CNN.

The agency's study found that between 2017 and 2020, patients on hemodialysis had an annual rate of staph infections that was 100 times higher than those who were not on dialysis. These were 4,248 for every 100,000 person-years and 42 for every 100,000 person-years, respectively.

In 2020, roughly 15,000 bloodstream infections were reported to the government's National Healthcare Safety Network. Among these, about one in three resulted from the bacteria Staphylococcus aureus, and antibiotic-resistant bacteria caused another one-third.

The CDC's study also found that the type of access used for dialysis was a crucial factor. Patients connected to the machine via a central venous catheter were at higher risk of infection because one side of the tube was exposed to germs.

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Factors That Affect Statistics

The head of the CDC's dialysis safety team, Dr. Shannon Novosad, said on Monday that infections are thought to be the second-leading cause of death among dialysis patients. According to CNBC, she noted that this number represented all infections and not just bloodstream infections.

The health agency also noted that more than 800,000 people in the United States are living with kidney failure and that 70% of these are on dialysis. Authorities found that the rate of kidney failure is four times higher among Black people and two times higher among Hispanics. This comes as Black people represent roughly 33% of all patients in the U.S. who are on dialysis.

The team of researchers also looked at infection reports from 7,097 dialysis centers in 2020. It used a statistical model to assess potential associations between the main outcome of staph infection incidence with patient vascular access type.

The health agency's report found that bloodstream infection was most strongly linked with patient vascular access type. Other factors that contributed to a higher risk of infection include gender, where males are more prone, and the elderly aged 65 and above, said MedPage Today.

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