RECURRENT SKIN INFECTIONS: TREAT NOSE

Report #6853 7/7/96

If you suffer from recurrent skin infections, ask your doctor to culture your nose for bacteria. Most recurrent skin infections are caused by a germ called staph aureus and it often cannot be eradicated from your nose by conventional oral antibiotics.

Your doctor usually treats skin infections with antibiotic pills and injections, which readily clear germs from the skin, but oral and injected antibiotics rarely can clear staph aureus from your nose. Then, every time you sneeze or touch your nose, the spray deposits staph aureus on your hands where it goes back to your skin to start another infection. The vast majority of the time, your doctor can rid the germ from your nose and cure you by telling you to buy inexpensive bacitracin ointment bought over the counter without a prescription and to apply a small amount inside your nostrils for several weeks. Many doctors prescribe the far more expensive prescription ointment, mupiricin, because of the intense publicity that has been generated for its use (1,2,3).

When surgeons have staph aureus in their noses, they are usually not allowed to operate because the germ can get into surgical wounds. One of the most common causes of delayed wound healing. is an infection with staph aureus (4). It is also the most common cause of sore nipples in breast-feeding mothers (5). In one study, people with recurrent staph aureus infections were told to apply an antibiotic ointment into their noses for five days each month for one year (6). They finally got rid of the staph from their noses and stopped getting infections on their skin.

By Gabe Mirkin, M.D., for CBS Radio News