Fig. 5

Impact of antibiotic use in the past 3 months on MRSA point prevalence and epidemic potential. Black lines represent the point prevalence of colonized who used antibiotics in the past 3 months, and grey lines show the point prevalence of those who did not. Solid lines denote the distribution of colonized when MRSA acquisition and clearance rates were set at the respective point estimates (Table 1). Dashed lines represent the distribution of colonized in hypothetical scenarios which employed the combinations of upper and lower bounds of the 95 % CI’s of the respective acquisition and clearance rates. Thus, the dashed lines above the corresponding solid lines represent scenarios with high acquisition rates and low clearance rates, while dashed lines below the corresponding solid lines show scenarios with low acquisition and high clearance rates. a Distribution of colonized with non-USA300; b Distribution of colonized with USA300; c Distribution of co-colonized with non-USA300 and USA300