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90% rise in infection cases

Cases of a drug-resistant bacterial infection known as MRSA have risen by 90 percent since 1999, and they are increasingly being acquired outside hospitals, researchers reported yesterday.

Two new strains of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus - MRSA for short - were circulating in patients and they are different from the strains normally seen in hospitals, Ramanan Laxminarayan of Princeton University in New Jersey and colleagues wrote in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases after studying lab tests from 300 microbiology laboratories.