A single infusion of an antibiotic can clear serious bacterial skin infections — including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA — just as effectively as the 10-day regimen now used to treat patients, researchers reported Wednesday.

Many patients do not finish the complicated treatment for these infections, which requires two infusions of antibiotics daily, often in a hospital. Such incomplete treatments may breed resistance to antibiotics in surviving bacteria. A single-dose therapy may make it easier to treat these dangerous infections, said the authors of the new study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

The study was led by researchers at Duke University and designed and funded by the Medicines Company, the maker of the antibiotic, oritavancin. The drug, to be sold as Orbactiv, may be approved by the Food and Drug Administration as early as August under a special fast-track process, the company said.

“This is a bit of a light at the end of a dismal tunnel in the development of new antibiotics,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University, who was not involved in the new study.