New MRSA strain strikes men in San Fran, Boston

It looks like yet another strain of community-based MRSA has reared its ugly head. This time, a new, strongly drug-resistant strain of MRSA has emerged among gay men in San Francisco and Boston, according to new research. The study found that one in 588 residents of the heavily gay Castro district in San Francisco have the bug, as opposed to one in 3,800 people in the city as a whole. The disease is spreading not only through intercourse, but also, through skin-to-skin contact and touching surfaces where the bug exists. This strain, known as MRSA USA300, is resistant not just to methicillin, but also to several other antibiotics commonly used to treat the condition, including tetracycline, clindamycin and mupirocin. Mupirocin has been used to kill MRSA within carriers.

To find out more about this crisis:
- read this article from The New York Times

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