WASHINGTON, April 6 (Xinhuanet) -- Dangerous drug-resistant staph infections are found outside hospitals to become more common in the community in the United States, researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine to be published Thursday.

    Staphylococcus aureus, or staph, bacteria can cause conditions range from mild skin infections, which are displayed by mostly pimples and boils, to serious surgical wound infections, bloodstream infections and pneumonia. Staph infections that are resistant to methicillin and other first-line antibiotics had occurred almost exclusively in hospitals and other health care centers. But they are now being found among inmates, children and athletes.

    This situation has prompted researchers at the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention to conduct study in Baltimore, the Atlanta area and Minnesota to determine the origin of the drug resistant infections.

    Researchers checked lab reports for drug resistant staph. Overall, they found 17 percent of the drug resistant staph infections were caught in community with no apparent links to health care settings.

    Researchers said they didn't expect the rate to be that high atthe start of the study in 2001.

    The study found 75 percent of the community-acquired cases wereskin infections, 23 percent of them serious and hospitalized.

    In a second study published in the journal, researchers from the Harbor-University of California Los Angeles Medical Center, reported that they found 14 cases of rare necrotizing fascitis in the Los Angeles area were caused by drug-resistant staph, instead of the strep bacteria as usual.

    This showed that drug-resistant staph has developed "flesh-eating" capabilities, they reported. Enditem