Deaths from MRSA may have outstripped AIDS in US

More people died in the US from the MRSA infection than from AIDS in 2005, according to a new report.

The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), linked the MRSA infection to over 18,000 deaths in the US in 2005, compared to the 16,000 AIDS-related deaths recorded by the World Health Organization in the same year.

And the report also revealed that there were over 94,000 instances of life-threatening MRSA infection in the US in 2005.

The report said: "Invasive MRSA disease is a major public health problem and is primarily related to health care but no longer confined to acute care. Although in 2005 the majority of invasive disease was related to health care, this may change."

UK government statistics indicated that up to 30 per cent of the UK population may carry the germ that has the potential to cause the MRSA infection.

However, they also stated that the infection is far more likely to spread in hospitals and the JAMA figures indicated 58 per cent of MRSA cases occurred in hospital.

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