>BEIJING, Jan. 16 (Xinhuanet)– A new drug-resistant superbug staph is being transmitted among gay men, U.S. researchers said as quoted by media reports Wednesday. >Â Â Â Â The methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, is spreading among the gay communities outside hospitals in San Francisco, Boston, New York and Los Angeles.
>Â Â Â The Castro district of San Francisco, which has a higher gay population in the United States, has been hardest hit, researchers said.
>Â Â Â But the superbug was said to spread through skin to skin contact, therefore, anyone could get it.
>Â Â Â “It is skin to skin contact, not sexual orientation, that is crucial for it to be passed on,” said a spokesperson for the Health Protection Agency.Â
>Â Â Â Â ”These multi-drug resistant infections often affect gay men at body sites in which skin to skin contact occurs during sexual activities,” said Binh Diep, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, who led the study.
>Â Â Â Â The bacteria can cause life-threatening and deep-tissue infections if they enter the body through a wound in the skin and only be treated with expensive, intravenous antibiotics.
>Â Â Â Â Most people carry staph in their noses but community-based MRSA also can live in and around the anus and is passed between sexual partners.
>Â Â Â Â Staph killed about 19,000 Americans in 2005, most of them in hospitals, according to a report published in October’s Journal of the American Medical Association.
Source: news.xinhuanet.com
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