Eradicating Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus

To the Editor. —We read with great interest the response by Little1in the Questions and Answers section. While we agree that eradication of colonization with methicillin-resistantStaphylococcus aureus(MRSA) is a worthy goal and that mupirocin appears effective for this indication, we were surprised that alternative strategies to eradicate MRSA colonization were not presented. Topical bacitracin ointment has often been used to eradicate MRSA colonization. Reagan et al,2however, state that "topical bacitracin has been suggested for eradicatingStaphylococcus aureus, but studies have not documented efficacy." The reference cited to support this statement3was a comparison of topical bacitracin and vancomycin ointments for nasal carriers of Saureus. Antibiotic susceptibilities for the organisms isolated were not stated in the article. In this small study, both bacitracin and vancomycin ointments were found to suppress staphylococcal colony counts, but the change was not significantly different from that produced