Resistant staph cases on the rise

[Warpy]

Dangerous drug-resistant staph infections are showing up at an alarming rate outside hospitals and nursing homes in the United States.

New research found that in one part of the country, as many as one in five infections were picked up out in the community.

In a second study in the journal, researchers reported that drug-resistant staph has acquired “flesh-eating” capabilities and caused 14 cases of rare necrotizing fasciitis in the Los Angeles area. All needed surgery and 10 were in intensive care. The condition is usually caused by strep bacteria, and there has been only one other confirmed case caused by staph.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7407654/

The bugs are fighting back.

[prodigal_green]

1. Isn't that what killed

nostamj

[sharonking21]

2. Thank you for this

This is very interesting. I hadn't heard of the Staph-Necrotizing Fascitis link before although I was familiar with MRSA. Nor was I aware of the proportion of drug-resistant cases that were community-acquired.

I am a retired epidemiologist--I sure miss getting free access to NEJ, JAMA etc so I really glom onto these posts.

For those of you interested in such things, I have posted a list of general-reader books on epidemics, outbreaks and other medicine-oriented topics. I noticed that there is a large number of people interested in such things on this forum, so I thought it might act as a resource.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=209x1562

If you go there, I'm really interested in collecting the titles of other books you have found good to read about such things.

[doodadem]

3. Recent personal experience

Back before xmas, my mom had some minor surgery on her hand to remove a cyst. It snowballed into a weird staph infection in the bone, and they were actually talking at one point about amputating her hand! (VERY scary for her, especially since it's her right hand). They ended up implanting these little antibiotic beads under her skin, and she was spending huge amounts of time in the doctor's office and emergency room. But they finally got it under control.

I personally think there's some relationship between these antibiotic resistant strains, and the antibiotics they shove into the cattle, chickens, etc. that people eat. We're all overdosed. What say you, SharonKing?

[sharonking21]

4. I'm not completely sure

I hate to admit it, but I'm not sure of the degree to which these antibiotics pass through to us (my tenure was more in HIV--a virus). Its seems plausible. I think I'll do some searches later tonight.

I know that antibiotics are vastly overprescribed--used to be even more so than today--some doctors have gotten the message but patients still demand them when they have colds etc.

Also, there is not as much interest in the drug companies in doing research and providing new antibiotics as there used to be. Apparently it isn't very profitable compared to drugs for chronic diseases, anxiety, depression, and HIV and profit is their main interest.

Further, the thing about antibiotics and bugs is, we got a kind of free pass for about 40 years after the introduction of antibiotics, but the normal thing for the bugs to do is to mutate or swap genes and adapt.

How quickly they do this determines the rate at which we have to come up with new antibiotics.

I think bacteria (have to check this to be sure) are slower to mutate, in general, say than viruses, so we had some lead time--during that time we came to think of bacterial infectious diseases as a thing of the past--we took everything for granted.

But had we looked at evolution more closely, we might not have been such wastrels.

It is catching up with us now.

[HuckleB]

6. Yes, they're overprescribed.

But that's not the only issue. A big part of this problem, theoretically, is that many people didn't complete the prescribed dosing of antibiotics, stopping the dosage after a few days instead of completing the cycle prescribed. This may have allowed the more virulent bacteria to survive and mutate into what are now antibiotic resistant bacteria.

[AlienGirl]

5. I have MRSA right now

So far it is responding to an oral sulfa drug. The people at the dr's office said they have seen quite a few MRSA cases lately.

Tucker

[Sgent]

7. We've seen a major uptick

in Staff in the last 2-3 years here, even among generally healthy populations. Had to treat 3-4 cases a year of significant infection (outpatient), and a lot of minor cases. Also, I have yet to see an infection which is not resistant to at lest 1-2 antibiotics traditionally used as first line treatment. Experience says it should be about 25% of that amount.

[AlienGirl]

8. I'm slightly immunocompromised

My immune system hasn't been great since my cancer treatments three years ago, so I catch lots of things.

What's really scary about the MRSA is I didn't get it in a healthcare setting--I caught it "wild." If I understand right, now pretty much everyone I know has been colonized by the bacteria (since I didn't have it covered the first couple days, when I thought it was just a spider bite).

This thing's going to leave a huge scar. The abcess itself is pretty big and there is some blackened, necrotic tissue around it. Good thing I don't care how I look in shorts...

Tucker