It all began with what looked like a spider bite on Eileen Moore's left thigh. Nothing to worry about, she figured.
Within 24 hours, the "bite" became a 6-inch welt with a bubble of pus that eventually ripened into a black wound. Over the next few months, scabs dotted her face. A hangnail caused her middle finger to bloat like a sausage. Her pierced ears oozed pus.
The cause of Moore's ordeal was a bacterium known as methicillin-resistant \o7Staphyloc\f7\o7occus aureus,\f7 which in its most severe form can turn into a fatal flesh-destroying scourge.
For decades, the infections were found only in hospitals, where the constant use of different antibiotics, including the potent methicillin, made it resistant to many of the most powerful antibiotics.
In the last few years, it has emerged in gyms, jails, schools -- and just about anywhere bacteria can grow. It has become a simmering problem that is largely unknown by the general population.
"I would characterize it as widespread, and in some areas it is epidemic," said Jeff Hageman, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a coauthor of two studies on staph published last year.
There are few statistics on the disease, because resistant staph infections are not routinely reported to the CDC. But one study published last year in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases estimated there were about 126,000 cases from 1999 to 2000 -- twice the number of hepatitis B cases each year.
"The rapidity with which this has emerged over the last two to three years is probably unprecedented," said Donald Low, a microbiologist at the University of Toronto who was one of the key scientists who dealt with Toronto's SARS outbreak in 2003. "When you look at the numbers, this way outstrips other so-called new infectious diseases."
Its victims are legion.
Five football players with the St. Louis Rams developed lesions on their elbows, forearms or knees, where turf burns had opened up their skin in 2003. Players from a competing team also developed sores after playing against the Rams.
San Francisco has seen a surge of this antibiotic-resistant bacteria in intravenous drug users and homeless people.
In 2004, actress Hilary Swank found a blister on her foot while training at a Brooklyn boxing gym for her part in the film "Million Dollar Baby." It turned out to be a staph infection.
