By Anita Manning, USA TODAY

A virulent, drug-resistant form of staph bacteria that has spread across the USA since it was identified in 2000 can be spread by sexual activity, a mode of transmission that is “important and previously unrecognized,” a new study says.

Scientists at Columbia University Medical Center, reporting in the Feb. 1 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases, identified three cases in which the bacteria known as community-associated MRSA passed between sexual partners….

… In the new study, researchers looked at 114 households in Manhattan where MRSA infections had been identified and found three in which the bacteria was spread by sexual activity.

In two cases, the women said they regularly shaved their pubic area, and their sexual partners had “pimples” in the groin area, researchers say.

In a third, the woman had MRSA-positive abscesses on her buttock, and her husband later developed a rash and MRSA-positive boils on his body. One of the women also had herpes. (more…)

health, medicine, sex