Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Causes
By Mayo Clinic staffBoils usually form when one or more hair follicles — the tube-shaped shafts from which hair grows — become infected with staph bacteria (Staphylococcus aureus). These bacteria, which normally inhabit your skin and sometimes your throat and nasal passages, are responsible for a number of serious diseases, including pneumonia, meningitis, urinary tract infections and endocarditis — an infection of the lining of your heart. They're also a major cause of hospital-acquired infections and food-borne illnesses.
Staph bacteria that cause boils generally enter through a cut, scratch or other break in your skin. As soon as this occurs, specialized white blood cells called neutrophils rush to the site to fight the infection. This leads to inflammation and eventually to the formation of pus — a mixture of old white blood cells, bacteria and dead skin cells.
- Habif, TP. Furuncles and carbuncles. In: Clinical Dermatology: A Color Guide to Diagnosis and Therapy. 4th ed. Philadelphia, Pa.: Mosby Inc; 2004. http://www.mdconsult.com/das/book/body/103911270-3/743722527/1195/55.html#4-u1.0-B0-323-01319-8..50011-X--cesec55_993. Accessed Aug. 27, 2008.
- Baddour LM, et al. Skin abscesses, furuncles and carbuncles. http://www.uptodate.com/home/index.html. Accessed Aug. 27, 2008.
- Wolf K, et al. Section 22. Bacterial infections involving the skin. In: Fitzpatrick's Color Atlas & Synopsis of Clinical Dermatology, 5th ed. McGraw-Hill Companies Inc; 2005. http://www.accessmedicine.com/popup.aspx?aID=755117. Accessed Aug. 27, 2008.
- Tree tea oil. Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database. http://www.naturaldatabase.com/(S(iyok1uyiw1fl112ek3ax2lu2))/nd/Search.aspx?cs=MAYO&s=ND&pt=100&id=113&fs=ND&searchid=11129198. Accessed Aug. 28, 2008.
- Community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA). American Academy of Dermatology. http://www.aad.org/pm/temp/mrsa/qa.html. Accessed Aug. 28, 2008.
