Posted on 07/17/2004 11:53:23 AM PDT by neverdem
Reuters
A drug-resistant "superbug" found in hospitals has a close cousin that is affecting athletes, prisoners and small children in growing numbers across the United States, disease experts said yesterday.
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA can become fatal if not treated with the right antibiotics, said Daniel B. Jernigan of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"MRSA is showing up in places it had never been seen before -- as a predominant cause of skin disease among children in some regions of the country, as clusters of abscesses among sports participants, as the most common cause of skin infections among inmates in some jails, and among military recruits and, rarely, as a severe and sometimes fatal lung or bloodstream infection in previously healthy people," Jernigan told reporters.
PING
Interesting and disturbing post. Close-quarters and less than ideal hygiene seem to be similarities between these various groups, and small children of course have less developed immune systems.
Now, how about students living in college dorms? (Can you guess my child will be one soon?) They are also prone to ailments like those that plague soliders, trench mouth, for one example. My kid will have to get the meningitis vaccine, which I think is a good thing. They also recommend the hepatitis b (or c? I can't remember). I was thinking this was over kill, maybe I'm wrong. They are making it mandatory for HS athletes in NJ this year. Would it be in anyway a preventive against this infection?
Signed,
Anxious mommy
Scary stuff. Thankfully (I think) when my son returns to college he will be living in an apartment instead of the dorm.
Interesting and disturbing post. Close-quarters and less than ideal hygiene seem to be similarities between these various groups, and small children of course have less developed immune systems.
I'm more inclined to think that physical contact is the common denominator among athletes, military recruits and inmates. Staph is all over the place including skin.
Do they mean from illegals coming in without practicing hygiene? Could this be tied to the recent influx of illegals that have been flooding the U.S? Seems like too much of a coincidence.
Several years ago, when my physician was questioned about this, her response was this, " We have abused antibiotics to the point where they (Staph, etc) are becoming more and more resistant to anything that we can throw at them.".
Antibiotics can be found in the foods that you ingest - most people don't realize that cows, chickens and hogs are fed antibiotics everyday. Our immune systems cannot
Pardon me, but I didn't realize that the Lancet link was abstract and glossary. After reading the abstract, I assumed what followed was the remainder of the article. That's what happens when folks assume. Now, I'll have the humble pie.
Just between you, me and the ass, I'll let that one pass.
fyi--MRSA has been present in the U.S. for at least 20 years. I can recall special hospital precautions for MRSA back in the early '80s.
raybbr, Great Britain also seems to have community acquired MRSA. I don't think their problem originates from south of the Rio Grande.
jocon, living in close proximity and poor hygiene were mentioned as other risk factors.
They inserted an IV in his arm and left it there. Another tube into his knee connected to a portable vacuum pump.
The IV ran all the way into his chest.
He had to give himself meds through the IV several times a day for one month. Then on pills that cost $1800.
He is to find out shortly whether the infection is gone.
The Dr. said his type of staph wasn't the real bad one either.
"More relevant" means there is a higher incidence rate among those people. (From the Center for International Development at Harvard University)
Rosamund Williams, M.D., World Health Organization Dr. Williams’ addressed the problem of AMR in developing countries, which lack much of the basic infrastructure for tracking and curbing antibiotic overuse. Dissemination of information on proper use is an important first step. In developing countries, both physicians and patients must be targeted. To increase the effectiveness of education efforts, researchers need to understand patients’ preferences for care. In many cultures patients expect to receive a pharmaceutical, often in intravenous form, as a routine matter of care.
From the same report. I don't mean to say that the growth in Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) is solely a problem with immigrants. If you read these reports they use careful language when referencing the source of some of the cases of AMR. Ignoring those cases and the problems they present is a cause for concern. When it comes to national health political correctness needs to be thrown out the window, fast.
I see MRSA everyday but the one to worry about is VRE Vancomycin Resistant Enterococcus. Vanco is the strongest antibiotic we have and VRE is laughs at Vanco. Something else the medical establishment is not telling the people.
I think farms use 65% of all antibiotics. They don't clean the animals or anything, they just cram them into ridiculously small cages where the animals can't even turn around, leave the animal to wallow in filth, and pump them full of antibiotics in hope the animal doesn't get sick & die.
This is one of the few areas where I support government intervention... we're going back to the pre-antibiotics days when it was rare to survive broken legs because of infection. Hello typhoid!
No problem, happens to all of us at one time or the other!
This article caught my eye for one specific reason. Last summer my son, who was working on a fishing boat, had two things happen.
One: In working with the shrimp and other fish, he had small cuts on his hands which became infected with Staph. This is common among fisherman and he wasn't worried about it.
Two: While trying to secure parts of the boat during a storm, he pulled the groin muscles.
Now these two things don't seem related, but while he was here visiting (he had plans to head for Seattle and a job in the industry out there), his groin injury seems to get worse while his hands had cleared up.
It got to the point where he was forced by me to go to the emergency room. They initially thought that he was having a heart attack (he's 36) but after taking blood work it was found that the staph had travelled to the hip joint.
He had immediate surgery to scrap out the joint and was infused with massive amounts of antibiodics. While in the hospital, he had two other surgeries to scrap the bone and joint. He had a shunt placed into his chest over the heart area because they also thought the infection had traveled to his heart. (Thank GOD, it didn't). The antibiodics he was given were the strongest on the market.
He was in the hospital for a month. After coming home, he found that he could not continue on to Seattle so went back to Key West and working on the fishing boats again. Within one month, they thought that the infection had returned - scared us both silly! The doctors told him he should find another field in the industry to work in.
He has had only one other reoccurence of the infection and luckily they didn't have to operate a fourth time. There is always the posibility that it will come back and he may not be so lucky next time.
One thing of interest has stood out in my mind. The doctor told him that Staph travels to the weakess point in your body.
When the public wises up to the fact that they are doing themselves and injustice and stop requesting these drugs for everything from the common cold up, we might see a break through.
If we can get the antibiodic out of the animal foods we might also see another break, but I doubt we will see that.
My dad went into the hospital back in 1971 with what he thought was a hard - to -shake virus of some kind, then he ran a temperature of almost 106 and the doctors said it was a resistant strain of staph. He died of a massive cerebral hemorrage on the 6th night he was there even though they had him on the strongest medication it was possible to give him.
About 2 weeks later we saw an article in the paper that doctors had found a new combination of antibiotics that worked on the staph infection. It's really ironic sometimes how things like that happen.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.