How are S. aureus infections treated?
S. aureus infections are treated with antibiotics, such as flucloxacillin or vancomycin. Abscesses also benefit from being drained or aspirated, and this means a needle or catheter is inserted into the abscess and the pus is sucked out. Antibiotics are chemicals that kill bacterial cells or prevent them reproducing. Antibiotics work best if the immune system is healthy and clearing up the dead or non-reproducing bacteria. Some patients who receive antibiotics will not be cured, either because the antibiotics can’t penetrate into the infected tissue, because the bacteria are resistant to them, or because the immune response is not sufficient. The antibiotics of choice for S. aureus infection are derivatives of penicillin, and they prevent the formation of new bacterial cell walls. Almost as soon as penicillin was introduced in the 1940s, some bacteria were able to resist this antibiotic by producing a protein that degraded it (beta-lactamase). These resistant bacteria then spread until
