Among patients treated at urban public hospital emergency rooms for skin and soft-tissue infections, more and more often the cause appears to be the antibiotic-resistant ‘superbug’ known as MRSA, new research shows.

MRSA - methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus - is not killed by penicillin-type drugs, so these kinds of antibiotics can no longer be considered standard treatment for wounds and abscesses, Dr. Bradley W. Frazee and colleagues suggest in the Annals of Emergency Medicine.

Frazee’s team at Alameda County Medical Center in Oakland, California, obtained cultures from 137 patients who came to their emergency department with such infections.

Staph aureus was identified in 119 infection sites, and the bacterium was the methicillin-resistant type in 75 percent of cases, the authors report. Overall, MRSA was present in 51 percent of infection site cultures.

However, the bug could be knocked out by other types of antibiotics - for example, 100 percent of the specimens were susceptible to vancomycin and 94 percent were susceptible to clindamycin.

So, these antibiotics may be a more appropriate first choice for treating skin and soft tissue infections, if MRSA is common in the region, Frazee and his colleagues advise.

SOURCE: Annals of Emergency Medicine, online issue December 8, 2005.