HEALTH

CA-MRSA: A new bug with a familiar name

Culturing staph infections is necessary in many parts of the country to prescribe the correct antibiotic.

By Susan J. Landers, AMNews staff. Nov. 22/29, 2004.

Washington -- A new strain of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus has settled into some communities, and physicians everywhere are being warned to keep an eye out for it.

While infection with MRSA is well-known in hospitals, the new strain of resistant bacteria is found among people without traditional risk factors.

Dubbed community-associated MRSA, or CA-MRSA, by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the bacteria differ genetically from the more familiar hospital-acquired MRSA, said researchers at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy held Oct. 30 to Nov. 2 in Washington, D.C.

CA-MRSA is infecting seemingly healthy people, often children, and causing primarily skin and soft-tissue lesions such as boils, abscesses and cellulitis, which are frequently misdiagnosed as spider bites.

The bacteria already have taken up what is likely to be permanent residence in parts of California, Texas and Georgia. Several outbreaks have occurred in prisons, in military bases and among members of athletic teams throughout the country.

Physicians in communities in which the strain is now endemic recommend a cautious treatment approach, particularly when prescribing an antibiotic.

There is often an incorrect assumption that the skin or soft-tissue infection being treated is caused by a susceptible strain of staph, said Elizabeth Bancroft, MD, a medical epidemiologist at the Los Angeles County Dept. of Health Services who has studied outbreaks in her county. All too often, the antibiotic prescribed does nothing to slow the infection.

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