http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/08/17/nsoap117.xml
Posted on 11/17/2007 4:12:41 PM PST by neverdem
Some of the most aggressive antibiotic-resistant staph infections gain their advantage with a molecule that punctures the immune cells trying to fight off the bacteria, scientists have discovered. Understanding the role of this molecule in methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) could lead to new therapies for the notoriously hard-to-treat, and sometimes fatal, skin infection.
Staph bacteria are ubiquitous but aren't dangerous unless they seep into an open wound. Even then, antibiotics will usually stop the infection. But some strains of staph that infect hospital patients with weakened immune systems have become resistant to all standard antibiotics, including methicillin.
Now, a newer strain of the flesh-eating disease has swept through schools, day care centers, health club locker rooms, and prisons. So-called community-associated MRSA (CA-MRSA) typically afflicts healthy people because it's especially effective at causing infections in the first place. For now, it's resistant only to methicillin, but scientists fear that it will become resistant to other antibiotics.
In the Oct. 17 Journal of the American Medical Association, Monina Klevens of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and her colleagues gave the first statistics on just how widespread MRSA has become. The researchers estimated that 94,360 cases occurred in 2005, leading to 18,650 deaths. They argued that these numbers are on the rise, particularly outside the hospital setting.
In a separate study, Michael Otto of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and his colleagues found a molecule involved in CA-MRSA's success.
While studying small molecules that help a different bacterium, Staphylococcus epidermidis, fight its host, the scientists decided to check whether MRSA carried a similar molecule. They found that CA-MRSA had much more of a protein called phenol-soluble modulin (PSM) than the less virulent MRSA strains associated with hospitals had.
"Different bacteria have different strategies to attack the...,"
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencenews.org ...
Check out PSM.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/08/17/nsoap117.xml
Importantly, one of the common repositories for MRSA is in the nostrils. Lots of people carry it there without it causing infection.
This matters because if your immune system is weakened, such as after surgery, this is a reservoir of MRSA that can attack you. For this reason, some, but not all hospitals, are giving patients with upcoming surgery a simple nasal spray antibiotic that is specific for MRSA.
So if you expect surgery, be sure to ask beforehand if you will get a nasal spray prophylaxis for MRSA. If they say “no”, or they don’t know what you mean, discuss it with them.
Each year, over 100,000 Americans get MRSA infections, so this is not just a frivolous worry. The vast majority of these infections are “iatrogenic”, which means that people got them *in* the hospital, while being treated for other problems.
An important part of health care is watching out for your own interests.
Health ping.
actually the term for hospital acquired infections is nosocomial. Iatrogenic means caused by the treatment or error in the treatment and can refer to infections as well as other complications.
I blame frijoles.
Country "music".
It causes all diseases to be more deadly and inbred.
Good luck and don’t be bashful about returning to the doctor often.
Call a friend and find another doctor. You sound like you are in really bad shape and your doctor is talking about paper towels.
Get help, please.
I don't believe you wrote what you wanted to say. If you a bacterial infection, the bug is susseptible or resistant to the antibiotic.
I acted fast enough that I didn’t wait for it to get better on its own or become MRSA. Within a week after my staph treatment I had an upper respiratory infection, earaches & a horrible sore throat. My doctor isn’t too concerned. However I am as the pills I am on now make me dizzy and not myself. My doctor told me hand washing is very important & to keep a roll of paper towels in the bathroom. He says towels spread germs. All I know is that I have never felt so badly in my life & if I don’t feel better by next week I am going back. I have never felt so weak in my life.
This doesn't sound good. This may be an adverse drug reaction, or maybe MRSA, or something else. Do you have a temperature? What's the name of the drug?
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It would be intereseting if there was a Red-on-Red bacteria parasite virus that would go kill these.
One of the things I recommend to folks is to hit the drug store and get some acidopholous.
While it might not directly help against staph, having a good balance in the intestinal flora probably enables the immune system to more aggressively target bad stuff.
One of the things that come up in the health blogs is Beta 1,6 glucan. It is a polysaccharide that is in the cell membranes of yeast. It’s claimed that b16G kicks your immune system into warp speed, because the body has a natural ability from very early on to fight off yeast infections. Yeasts are one of the most ubiquitous - and opportunistic - organisms around, and if your body wasn’t constantly destroying it, you would be totally fermented in a day or two.
You live and learn. That is the first time I have ever heard of “nosocomial” infections.
I had an aunt who drove the doctors to distraction with persistent infections after hip replacement. It was finally tracked down to a low level dental infection, and one less tooth later, her hip finally healed.
We need to learn a lot more about complex flora and its interactions.
I’ve heard that sometimes “fecal transplants” are used to introduce healthier cultures into the digestive tracts of individuals who have had theirs “distressed” from various causes. This either amounts to giving the patient some feces from a healthy person in a milkshake, or introducing it rectally.
While there has been some effort to document what microorganisms are in the intestines, at last I heard the effort ended after only documenting several hundred types, with many more remaining unknown.
I wonder if someday, after sanitizing the hands, or on a post-surgical area, a solution with protective flora might be introduced, which can help prevent the return of pathogenic organisms. It might prove superior to just sanitizing in preventing infection.
There is considerable speculation that many of the immune response diseases might be a response either to a lack of friendly microorganisms, or oddly enough, a lack of pathogenic organisms. In the latter case, the body might be overreacting because it “assumes” infection where none exists.
This even includes parasitic worms. One individual with life threatening asthma traveled to Ghana to obtain a sample of pinworms, increasingly rare in the modern world. By intentionally infecting himself, he significantly reduced his asthma symptoms. However, he must periodically reinfect himself, or else his symptoms return when the worms abate.
In Germany, severe immune system based gastrointestinal problems are being addressed with the use of pig whip worms, which normalizes the immune response, but cannot live in the human body more than a week or two.
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