What is the treatment for MRSA ?

Your medical practitioner is the best person to devise the most appropriate treatment regime for MRSA infection.

Many CaMRSA skin infections can be treated by a doctor, trained nurse or health worker draining the abscess or boil.  This needs to be done under sterile conditions.  Allowing the pus to drain out safely may sometimes be the only procedure that is needed.  After this has occurred, the patient often reports feeling better.

Importantly, after this procedure, the wound needs to be well protected with a waterproof bandage so that the infection isn’t spread to other people.

As MRSA is resistant to a number of different anti-staphylococcal antibiotics, it is more challenging to treat than non-resistant bacteria.  The good news is that MRSA is not resistant to all antibiotics, allowing most strains of MRSA to be treated with special antibiotics such as vancomycin, teicoplanin and mupirocin.

If your doctor prescribes an antibiotic, it’s important to take all of the doses as instructed.   This rule should be followed even if the infection appears to be getting better.  This is of course unless your doctor tells you to stop taking it.  There is a possibility that CaMRSA skin infections may recur after they appear cured.   Therefore, it's wise to remain vigilent in how medication is taken as well as keeping an eye out for any tell-tale signs of re-infection.

For MRSA sufferers who have weakened immune systems, the best treatments are considered to be with the antibiotics vancomycin or teicoplanin.  As the oral absorption of vancomycin and teicoplanin is very low, these antibiotics are administered intravenously to hospital patients to control systemic infections.

Interestingly, several newly discovered strains of MRSA have shown antibiotic resistance even to vancomycin and teicoplanin.  More recent drugs, such as linezolid and daptomycin, are considered effective against both CaMRSA and HA-MRSA

There are particular groups of people who are more susceptible to risk of infection with MRSA than others. This being the case, some ordinarily healthy people are screened for MRSA by taking a swab of their skin or inside of their nose.  If laboratory testing subsequently shows that these healthy people are carrying MRSA bacteria on their skin or in their noses, they are usually treated with an antibiotic cream known as mupirocin. This cream is then applied to the affected areas of the person’s body.  This action is taken to reduce the risk of the bacteria entering the body through an open wound and the likelihood of other people being infected by MRSA.