Question: How does Staphylococcus aureus get into the human nose ?

Jim Caryl answered on 21 Jun 2011:

Well much of the bacteria that we have on us originally came from our mothers as we were being born, and then we quickly pick up bacteria from all sorts of sources such as contact with other people, animals and crawling around on the ground and putting things in our mouths. Picking your nose might be one way!

S. aureus doesn’t do well in all parts of the body, so unless it finds itself a niche (a place it likes to be), then it is likely to be washed off or die. However, not all people are permanently colonized in their nose, and there are people looking at why this is the case; the immune response and the surface of these people’s cells in their nose behave slightly differently, and this might provide an interesting insight into how we can make our nose a less hospitable place for S. aureus to be.