UCSF Study Shows Sharp National Rise in Skin Infections, MRSA Suspected

A national analysis of physician office and emergency department records shows that the types of skin infections caused by community-acquired MRSA doubled in the eight-year study period, with the highest rates seen among children and in urban emergency rooms.

The study, conducted at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), examined annual data from the NationalCenter for Health Statistics of patient visits for skin and soft-tissue infections from 1997 to 2005. The results appear in the July 28, 2008 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

During that time period, office and emergency room visits for all skin infections rose from 8.6 million nationwide to 14.2 million, according to Adam Hersh, MD, PhD, lead author on the paper and a fellow in the divisions of general pediatrics and of pediatric infectious diseases at UCSF.