MRSA 'turns into flesh bug'

A new alert over MRSA was sounded today after research found it can lead to a deadly flesh-eating bug.

Doctors in America have found 14 cases in one year where patients caught MRSA which developed into the flesh-eating bug, necrotising fasciitis, within a year.

The development in the evolution of the bug will heap further pressure on scientists and politicians to bring the superbug crisis under control.

Britain has one of the worst records in Europe on combating the disease and it is at the top of the health agenda going into the general election.

The patients who developed necrotising fasciitis in Los Angeles caught MRSA in the community and had not been in hospital, the usual source of the infection.

Necrotising fasciitis causes skin and tissue to die and it has to be cut out to stop it spreading. It can be fatal.

The study was limited and a localised strain of MRSA may have caused the problem. But the doctors' report in the New England Journal of Medicine concludes: "We characterise what appears to be a newlydescribed syndrome of necrotising fasciitis caused by commun ity - associated MRSA."