[MRSA--current aspects of resistance, pathology, epidemiology and therapy].

The Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) resistant against all kinds of beta-lactam antibiotics. Moreover, resistances against other antibiotics have gradually started to develop. In the last decades, MRSA started as a serious problem only in hospitals, but in recent years it also rose as an alarming community pathogen. In addition to the resistances against Penicillin which emerged in the 1940s. with the use of beta-lactamase proof antibiotics in the 1960s, the resistance of S. aureus against Methicillin started to develop. According to the kind of resistance, the genotype, the time of infection and the origin of the infection, MRSA infections are classified as hospital-associated (HA-MRSA) and community-associated (cMRSA). On the one hand, this differentiation results in distinct strategies of calculated therapy against each class of MRSA. On the other hand, it is important in order to identify relevant judicious aspects of transmission.