Staphlococcal endocarditis in parenteral drug abusers: source of the organism.

Because approximately one third of persons injecting illicit drugs carry Staphylococcus aureus in their nose and throat or on the skin, we wondered if the carrier was the person in the drug-injecting population at risk of developing endocarditis. If so, patients with drug-related, staphylococcal endocarditis should have a very high carriage rate of the organism when first admitted to the hospital. Ten such patients were studied within 3 days of admission, and all were carriers of S. aureus. In each case, the phage type of the carried organism matched that of the organism recovered from the blood.