14 DAY TRIAL // Patients suffering from cellulitis should be treated with vancomycin, a powerful drug that has showed better and faster results that other antibiotics like penicillin, Henry Ford Hospital researchers found.
Cellulitis is an inflammation of subcutaneous and dermal layers of the skin, caused by normal skin flora or exogenous bacteria (from water, earth and the air).
The infection often appears where the skin has been broken like from cracks in the skin, blisters, cuts, burns, insect bites, intravenous catheter insertion or surgical wounds.
Cellulitis can occur on any part of the body, but it usually appears on the skin on the face or on lower legs.
Until this new research, people with cellulitis were given appropriate antibiotics (B-lactam antibiotics like penicillin or cephalosporins) and the recovery period went from two days to six months.
The study led by Hiren Pokharna, MD, an Infectious Diseases Fellow at Henry Ford Hospital, concluded that vancomycin was much more effective than other antibiotics.
The study compared 226 patients treated intravenously with vancomycin and 199 patients treated intravenously with the B-lactam antibiotics, between December 2005 and October 2008, and found out that people from the first group responded better to the treatment and were even released, on average, a day earlier than others.
Pokharna said that “vancomycin is the better treatment option for managing patients hospitalized with cellulitis."
MRSA skin and soft tissue infections are increasing and it was really important finding an effective drug against this type of bacterial infections.
Cellulitis is a quite common bacterial skin infection, which can also be caused by many types of bacteria including staphylococcus and streptococcus, the usual symptoms being redness, swelling, tenderness and pain.
And even if, usually, MRSA strains have proven resistant to common antibiotics like penicillin, they are susceptible to vancomycin.
The research was presented October 23 at the 48th annual meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, October 21-24 in Vancouver.
Cellulitis is unrelated to cellulite, a cosmetic condition featuring dimpling of the skin.