Pharmacology and the Treatment of Complicated Skin and Skin-Structure Infections

Skin and skin-structure infections are estimated to cause more than 15 million infections1 and 870,000 hospital admissions2 annually in the United States. Rates of these infections are substantially higher than they were 10 to 20 years ago, owing in part to the emergence of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in the community.3 Two articles in this issue of the Journal report the results of phase 3, randomized, double-blind clinical trials (one of dalbavancin4 and the other of oritavancin5) for the treatment of acute bacterial skin and skin-structure infections. Although neither antibiotic agent is new (both date to the 1990s), they could . . .