Posted on 09/30/2004 3:06:21 PM PDT by neverdem
The Associated Press
Flesh-eating bacteria cases, fatal pneumonia and life-threatening heart infections suddenly are popping up around the country, striking healthy people and stunning their doctors. The cause? Staph, a bacteria better known for causing skin boils easily treated with standard antibiotic pills.
No more, say infectious disease experts, who increasingly are seeing these "super bugs" -- strains of Staphylococcus aureus unfazed by the entire penicillin family and other first-line drugs.
Until a few years ago, these drug-resistant infections were unheard of except in hospital patients, prison inmates and the chronically ill. Now, resistant strains are infecting healthy children, athletes and others with no connection to a hospital.
"This is a new bug," said Dr. John Bartlett, who heads the committee on antibiotic resistance at the Infectious Diseases Society of America. "It's a different strain than in the hospital ... more dangerous than other staph.
"Primary care physicians and ER doctors, they don't all know [about this] and should," he said.
Bartlett, a professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, treated three young Baltimore area women this year who got pneumonia from this community-acquired resistant staph. All had to be put on breathing machines, and one died, he said.
The infections will be a hot topic at the society's annual meeting this week in Boston. The society has been warning that drug companies are not developing enough new antibiotics to avert a crisis.
Among the case reports to be discussed:
* In Los Angeles, doctors at UCLA Medical Center treated 14 people with necrotizing fasciitis, informally known as "flesh-eating bacteria," over a 14-month stretch through April. Three needed reconstructive surgery; 10 spent time in intensive care.
"This is about as serious an infectious disease emergency as you can get," Dr. Loren G. Miller said. "We don't know how these people got the infection -- there doesn't seem to be a common thread."
* In Corpus Christi, Texas, doctors at Driscoll Children's Hospital saw fewer than 10 cases a year of community-acquired resistant staph infections in the 1990s, then saw 459 in 2003, with 90 percent in healthy children. A few developed life-threatening lung and heart infections or toxic shock syndrome.
* A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study shows another new twist: The resistant staph strain caused pneumonia in 17 people, killing five, during flu season last year.
Let me know if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
Is this M.R.S.A.? You get that from improperly sterilized equipment in hospitals.
please and thank you
it is now colonized all over the place including your skin possibly
Oooh, those nasty drug companies aren't doing enough research. And when they do the research and a new drug comes out these same nasty drug companies are blasted all over the map for charging $$$ for it. Do any of these folks see the cause and effect here??
"No more, say infectious disease experts, who increasingly are seeing these "super bugs" -- strains of Staphylococcus aureus unfazed by the entire penicillin family and other first-line drugs."(2nd paragraph)
I believe so.
the staph was also seen driving an SUV!
----with an assault weapon with an extended clip----
Can I get a sterile mouse?
...pardon me while I go wash my hands.....
I believe your premise is flawed.
The main reason that these drug companies are not working on antibiotics is that they are administered short term.
They are focusing their efforts on drugs which are for chronic conditions. There's a lot more money in that.
Please add me to your ping list. Thanks.
Thanks a lot! I'm what you call a "greedy geezer".
Do you have a problem with older folks?
Maybe we should all stop using those anti-bacterial cleaners so we have a the normal bacteria that should be on our skin.
P.S. Clinical trials are great - the Drs and Nurses wait on you hand and foot.
Actually, that is not true. Antibiotics have much more regulations attached to the development and production of them. It also takes much longer to bring them to market (one came to market in 2002 that took 35 years to develop).
Not only that, but considering that a simple course in microbiology and genetics for doctors and nurses would let them see why over prescribing antibiotics and the prevalent misuse is why there are now superbugs... (ie antibiotics for a cold virus) Unfortunately, most medical and nursing students can opt out of genetics... leaving them without the scientific knowledge of how these bacteria mutate and become resistant.
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