According to a report in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine, community-associated infection with methicillin, or multiple resistant Staphylococcus aureus MRSA), is now a common and serious problem. Infections usually involve the skin, especially among children, and hospitalization is common.
Scott Fridkin at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, and colleagues evaluated MRSA infections in patients identified from surveillance in Baltimore and Atlanta and in hospital-lab results from twelve hospitals in Minnesota and found 1647 cases of community-acquired MRSA infection reported 2001 through 2002.
The researchers suggest that the national burden and ultimate clinical impact of MRSA remain unclear, but one thing is certain: the disease has emerged in patients who do not have the established risk factors for this potentially lethal bacterium.