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.

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The report is the first to document the spread of MRSA through heterosexual activity, says
Rachel Gorwitz of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"MRSA is transmitted by direct skin-to-skin contact," she says, "so it's not surprising it
could be transmitted during sex."

MRSA once occurred primarily in hospitalized patients, but in recent years, a new strain has
emerged that causes persistent skin infections in young, healthy people who have not been
hospitalized, including football players and military recruits.

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.

The spread of MRSA through sexual activity has been seen by emergency room doctors, says James
Roberts of Mercy Hospital of Philadelphia.

In a letter published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine in January, he reported treating a
lap dancer for MRSA infections on her buttocks.

"She relayed that other lap dancers at her club had similar problems, considered a known
occupational hazard by the women," he wrote.

Researcher Frank Lowy, lead author of the Columbia report, says the study indicates that people
should refrain from sex if they have open lesions. "They have to be alert to the fact there's a
new bug in town," he says, "and one potential means of transmission is sexual activity."