Oct. 16, 2007 -- It appears that more people in the U.S. now die from the mostly hospital-acquired staph infection MRSA than from AIDS, according to a new report from the CDC.

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) was responsible for an estimated 94,000 life-threatening infections and 18,650 deaths in 2005, CDC researchers report in the Oct. 17 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association.

That same year, roughly 16,000 people in the U.S. died from AIDS, according to CDC figures.

The national estimate is more than double the invasive MRSA prevalence reported by CDC researchers five years earlier, says researcher R. Monina Klevens, DDS, MPH.

"MRSA infections are an important public health problem that can no longer be ignored," she tells WebMD. "We need to put this higher on our list of priorities."

Among the highlights from the newly published study: