RESIDENTS visiting New York City could be putting themselves at risk of a vicious skin infection resistant to all but the most powerful antibiotics.

At its worse, the infection can lead to amputation or death; at best, sufferers experience reddening of the skin, abscesses and tissue loss.

Highly contagious, it is spread through casual contact, making it within the realms of possibility that an unsuspecting host could travel to the island and cause an outbreak here.

Known officially as Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA), the rash was once limited to hospitals and health care facilities where it flourished among the elderly and the seriously ill. This week, however, the reported it had launched attack on a wider audience and built up immunity to antibiotics in sufficient proportion for health officials to dub it the "superbug".

Journalist Sam Smith interviewed several New York-based doctors on their experiences with the bug. Most had noted a sharp rise ? from one case every two months to one case a week ? in the period of a year.

"This is something we should be concerned about," said Dr. Dawn Harbatkin, medical director at the Callen-Lorde Community Health Centre in Chelsea.

Said Dr. Brian Saltzman of Beth Israel, who has just completed a study of the spread of MRSA outside hospitals: "We are seeing very impressive, very large, very difficult-to-treat skin abscesses."

Dr. Howard Grossman, who has a private practice in Chelsea, agreed: "Usually with infections you need a break in the skin to pass it," he said. "Not with this. It gets through unbroken skin with casual contact."

The reporter also spoke to two New Yorkers ? Keith and Steven ? who had been diagnosed with the infection in recent months.

According to Steve, what he thought was a pimple on his leg developed into a boil which refused to respond to antibiotics. As the infection continued towards his groin, Steve's worry intensified.

"The fact it wasn't responding (to drugs) and it was moving up that way was terrifying," he said. "It was eating up tissue."

The rash, which doctors believe Steve contracted at the gym, only began to abate following a lengthy hospital stay and a host of expensive antibiotics.

In Keith's case, the rash lasted for months, evidenced first on his legs and then his face before it returned to his legs. His physician believes Keith contracted the rash from a friend and that it has "colonised" inside him.

The United States' Centres for Disease Control and Prevention posted an MRSA fact sheet on its web site, having received queries about its spread among people with no apparent hospital contact.

"Staphylococcus aureus, often referred to simply as 'staph', are bacteria commonly carried on the skin or in the nose of healthy people," the site reads. "Occasionally, staph can cause an infection."

The site goes on to say that staph bacteria are among the most common causes of skin infections in the United States. Most, such as pimples and boils, are minor ? able to be treated without antibiotics.

"However, staph bacteria can also cause serious infections, which in the past were treated with a certain type of antibiotic related to penicillin. Over the past 50 years, treatment of these infections has become more difficult because staph bacteria have become resistant to various antibiotics, including the commonly used penicillin-related antibiotics. These resistant bacteria are called Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA."

The fact sheet states that most cases of MRSA found in the community are associated with recent antibiotic use, sharing contaminated items, having active skin diseases, and living in crowded settings.

According to the , the Department of Health is tracking the outbreak, but declined to provide the number of confirmed cases. The city is not aware of anyone dying of MRSA acquired outside hospitals.

According to an Institute of Medicine report last year, 80,000 people die each year in the United States from hospital-acquired infections. In New York City hospitals, about 50 per cent of infections are now resistant to some kind of antibiotic ? 40 per cent more than a decade ago, according to several local infectious-disease specialists.

Queries to Government's Chief Medical Officer Dr. John Cann on whether MRSA presents a threat to Bermuda were not returned by press time.