Exploring Drug Resistance Among Pathogens That Cause Skin and Soft Tissue Infections

Michael D. Nailor, PharmD, BCPS-AQ ID, clinical associate professor at the University of Connecticut School of Pharmacy, clinical specialist in infectious diseases at Hartford Hospital, and director of Infectious Disease Residency program at Hartford Hospital, discusses which skin and soft tissue infections (SSTIs) are likely to be drug-resistant.

Interview Transcript (slightly modified for readability)

“SSTIs make up a wide variety of different diagnoses, from cellulitis, to abscesses, to wound infections. If you look at cellulitis, for example, most cases are caused by Streptococcus pyogenes, which has little to no drug resistance.

[However], we know [that] once we get into abscesses, particularly from the community, more than half are probably made up of MRSA, which obviously extends a certain amount of drug resistance. Chronic wound infections can be both a mixture of gram-negatives [and] gram-positives, with some of those gram-negatives being resistant isolates; it’s often difficult to distinguish between colonization in those chronic wounds, versus actual infection with these resistant pathogens.”