Posted on 10/25/2005 5:00:31 PM PDT by blam
Iraq war casualties often complicated
Nathan Seppa
From San Francisco, at a meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America
Hundreds of injured soldiers returning from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan harbor an unusual bacterium that complicates their wound healing and may be spreading to other patients in hospitals where the soldiers are treated, a new study shows. Moreover, the microbe seems to be lingering in soldiers, cropping up during rehabilitation care received months after they have returned to the United States.
Paul M. Scott, a physician at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Md., and his colleagues isolated the bacterium, called Acinetobacter baumannii, from 148 wounded soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan between November 2002 and September 2003. Since then, more than 100 additional wounded combatants have been diagnosed with A. baumannii.
Many of the A. baumannii strains found in these soldiers don't match those occurring naturally in Iraqi soil, Scott notes. Their origins are "murky," he says.
A. baumannii can cause pneumonia and infect the urinary tract and blood, says Walter E. Stamm, a physician at the University of Washington in Seattle and president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
The infection also slows wound healing. It responds to antibiotic treatment, and none of the combat casualties so far has died from the infection. However, 18 people in the United States and Germany who weren't in active service but were being treated in the same hospitals as the infected soldiers who have also been found to be infected with A. baumannii. Five of these other patients have died, Scott says.
Richard L. Oehler, a physician at the James A. Haley Veterans Hospital in Tampa, Fla., reports that seven of the nine wounded soldiers admitted there for rehabilitation between June 2004 and January 2005 harbored A. baumannii strains that were resistant to certain commonly used antibiotics. One soldier has died, and the others have recovered.
"This is an unusual bacterium that has not been seen frequently as a cause of disease in U.S. hospitals," Stamm says. "Once it's introduced into a hospital, it can be difficult to get rid of."
Interesting - and significant.
Drug resistant bacteria are a huge threat, and new forms are appearing everywhere.
God bless our brave military.
Its kind of ironic to be having a problem with a water bacteria in a desert war.
The remnants of a biological weapons program?
I suspect any of Iraq's neighbors would've had a hard time dealing with this infection, if it had cropped up during another one of Saddam's little excursions.
They are hinting that there is something strange about this bug - saying that it is a form of bacteria not normally found in Iraq.
But it may be sourced from within the US army itself - some source of infection in their supplies - which then breaks out when there is a wound to infect.
A possibility perhaps but, I didn't read that into the article at all.
Multidrug-resistant Acinetobacter is not a new or emerging phenomenon, but A baumannii has always been an organism inherently resistant to multiple antibiotics. SOURCE
OK, kidding about ol' Louis. He was in the class after mine...
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