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01/15/2008: "Drug-resistant staph spreading in gay population"

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, is beginning to appear outside hospitals in San Francisco, Boston, New York and Los Angeles.

Sexually active gay men in San Francisco are 13 times more likely to be infected than their heterosexual neighbors, the researchers reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

"Once this reaches the general population, it will be truly unstoppable," said Binh Diep, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco who led the study.

[ This one's a puzzler: what about gays attracts staph? If you have a scientific reason, please send it in, as we're baffled. ]

http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN1337175820080114?feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews&sp=true?icw&rpc=92

Replies: 1 Comment

on Thursday, January 17th, Bug Chaser said

They note that in San Francisco and Boston, multidrug-resistant MRSA most often manifested as an infection of the buttocks, genitals, or perineum, suggesting sexual transmission.

Previous studies have suggested that MRSA amongst HIV-positive gay men is associated with high-risk sexual behaviours, including use of methamphetamine and other illicit drugs, sex with multiple partners, participation in a group sex party, use of the internet for sexual contacts, skin-abrading sex, and history of sexually transmitted infections.

The investigators comment, however, that it is not clear whether the behavior potentiating these infections among men who have sex with men is anal sex (that is, dissemination of rectal carriage of community-associated MRSA), skin-abrading sexual practices, or increased frequency of intimate skin-to-skin contact; prevention messages may therefore need to suggest caution in each of these practices.