Sir.—Demidovich et al1 recently published the results of a study comparing penicillin, erythromycin, and cephalexin therapies for impetigo. This study has to be praised, since a lot of confusion still exists with regard to childhood impetigo. Two of their conclusions were that Staphylococcus aureus was the most common cause of impetigo in children in their population and that penicillin is an inadequate treatment for this infection.
Sixteen months earlier, I and a coauthor published our results of a study comparing amoxicillin with augmentin for the treatment of nonbullous impetigo.2 In our population in southern Israel, S aureus was isolated from 100% of the patients, while additional streptococci were isolated from 29%. All 51 isolates of S aureus were resistant to penicillin; treatment failure was observed in five (20%) of 25 patients who received amoxicillin compared with none of those who received augmentin. Our conclusions, as follows, were