MRSA is not a reportable disease in Oregon, meaning there is no statewide tracking of the number of cases.

But laboratories do track those numbers in house.

At Bay Area Hospital in 2004, there were 403 staph aureas cases, with 46 percent antibiotic resistant. That's a jump from 7 percent in 1994. For 2005, hospital officials expect the numbers will show closer to half of all cases will have been antibiotic resistant.

The Oregon Department of Human Services now is tracking all cases of invasive HA-MRSA in three counties in the Portland area (strictly those bacterial strains that originate in hospitals and nursing homes). In 2004, in that area, there were 27 cases per 100,000 people, according to Research Analyst Mike Emerson, in the Acute and Communicable Disease Prevention Program. In 15 percent of those cases, the patient died.

A statewide survey of labs in 1996 found 11 percent of staph aureas cases were antibiotic resistant compared to 39 percent in 2003, according to DHS.

But as to the number of MRSA cases that people in the community acquire outside the hospital, Emerson said statisticians have come up with fuzzy guesses. Scientific papers have estimated the invasive cases account for 5 percent of all MRSA. That would mean in Oregon, there are about 540 cases of CA-MRSA per 100,000 people.

For comparison, there were about 440 cases of whooping cough statewide in 2003. Given that, he said, MRSA could be considered a serious problem.

“We don't want to freak people out,” Emerson added. “We want people to be aware of the bug, but to try to prevent it.”

- City Editor Elise Hamner