Topical administration of mupirocin ointment and fusidic acid in bacterial infection-induced skin diseases

Introduction:
Bacterial skin diseases have strong virulence to penetrate deep into the skin.

Aim:
To evaluate the therapeutic effects of 2% mupirocin ointment and 2% fusidic acid cream on bacterial skin diseases and their safety.

Material and methods:
One-hundred patients with bacterial skin diseases treated from May 2021 to May 2024 were randomly divided into a control group and a treatment group (n = 50) and they were given 2% mupirocin ointment and 2% fusidic acid cream, respectively. The skin injury areas, eczema area and severity index (EASI) scores, therapeutic effects and adverse reactions were compared before and after two courses of medication. The antibacterial activities of these two drugs against Staphylococcus epidermidis and Propionibacterium acnes were detected by the agar diffusion method.

Results:
After treatment, the EASI and itching scores of both groups significantly decreased compared with those before treatment (t = 30.804, 19.018, p < 0.001; t = 24.594, 12.680, p < 0.001), and the treatment group had significantly lower scores than those of the control group (p < 0.05). The overall effective rate of the treatment group (96.00%) was higher than that of the control group (90.00%) (p > 0.05), and the distribution of therapeutic effects of the treatment group was significantly better (p < 0.05). The two groups had similar incidence rates of adverse reactions (c² = 1.0147, p = 0.3074) that were remitted without additional therapy. Both mupirocin ointment and fusidic acid cream had clear inhibition zones for S. epidermidis, with similar diameters (31.69 ±7.12 mm vs. 31.78 ±6.54 mm, t = 0.0949, p = 0.9245). However, only fusidic acid cream had an obvious inhibition zone for P. acnes on reinforced Brucella agar plate.

Conclusions:
The therapeutic effects of fusidic acid cream on bacterial skin diseases were superior to those of mupirocin ointment.