Community-Acquired Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Severe Infection in Two Healthy Patients with Ear Piercing

Body piercing is a type of self-expression which is based on creating a hole in the skin, subcutaneous tissue or cartilage in order to be able to insert jewellery. The aim was to report severe CA-MRSA infections in two patients, one adult and one child, from different teaching hospitals, in the same period of time and both of them had penetrating implantation as a risk factor. The two isolates were CA-MRSA PVL (+), spa t019, cassette IV and ST30. Referring to the clonal relationship, PFGE showed that both isolates were closely related, indicating that they were probably part of the outbreak. It was not possible to investigate if the piercing setter was the same person in both cases