THURSDAY, Aug. 13 (HealthDay News) -- Community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA) infection appears to be leading a surge in skin and soft-tissue infection (SSTI) in the United States, according to a study in the September issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases.

John Edelsberg, M.D., of Policy Analysis Inc. in Brookline, Mass., and colleagues analyzed data from the 2000 to 2004 U.S. Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project National Inpatient Sample (HCUP-NIS), to identify emerging trends for hospital admissions for SSTI.

Researchers' estimated annual SSTI admissions increased from 675,000 in 2000 to 869,800 in 2004. The researchers write that the increase was likely due to a surge in infections by CA-MRSA, which other studies have shown account for 14 percent of invasive infections nationwide and 59 percent of SSTIs among patients who came to emergency departments. The researchers also note that the rate for pneumonia infection, another major category of community-associated infection, remained unchanged for the time period.

"Although we could not establish in our study whether the increase in the number of SSTI hospital admissions was a result of the growing prevalence of CA-MRSA (the HCUP-NIS does not report microbiologic data), we suspect that the two phenomena are closely linked -- especially in light of the absence of any similar increase in hospital admissions for pneumonia, the most common community-associated infection requiring hospitalization. We therefore believe that the clinical and economic effects of CA-MRSA SSTIs are substantial and growing, and that this increase should be a focus of additional research," the authors write.

The research was funded by Astellas Pharma U.S. Inc.

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