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Veteran
- Mar 5, 2004
- 4,265
- 4
"Ordinary soap will do. It dilutes the concentration of bacteria. You don't need antibacterial soap."
Another preventable illness being spread by sexual deviants.
A new variety of staph bacteria, highly resistant to antibiotics and possibly transmitted by sexual contact, is spreading among gay men in San Francisco, Boston, New York and Los Angeles, researchers reported Monday.
The risk of contracting this difficult-to-treat bug is 13 times greater for gay men than for the rest of the city's population, researchers found.
"We probably had it here first, and now it is spreading elsewhere," said Binh An Diep, a researcher at San Francisco General Hospital and lead author of the report. "This is a national problem, and San Francisco is at the epicenter."
What is unusual in this case is the high percentage of infections - up to 40 percent - occurring in the buttocks and genitalia.
Although researchers have stopped short of declaring this form of staph a sexually transmitted disease, the infections are found where skin-to-skin contact occurs during sexual activity.
Most of the infections are limited to the skin surface, but the bacteria can invade deeper tissues or disseminate through the bloodstream. According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, various forms of MRSA are causing 95,000 of these more costly and potentially life-threatening infections - and 19,000 deaths - annually in the United States.
"We are nowhere near the peak," Diep said. "The peak will occur when it spreads into the general population."
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