Antibiotic-resistant superbug causes deadly skin boils

San Mateo County Times ^ | 2/10/2003 | Suzanne Bohan

[tort_feasor]

Antibiotic-resistant superbug causes deadly skin boils Reports of mystery infection prompts S.F. watch on gay men By Suzanne Bohan , STAFF WRITER

A bacterial infection that overpowers most antibiotics has escaped the confines of hospitals and is showing up in alarming numbers among the general public in California, according to health officials.

Scattered clusters of the infection have been reported throughout the nation.

While no cases have yet been reported outside hospitals in Alameda County, a rise in the infections -- particularly among gay men -- in San Francisco prompted the city's public health department to launch a surveillance program this week, said Edwin Charlebois, an infectious disease epidemiologist with the University of California, San Francisco.

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The pathogen causes painful skin boils and abscesses, and can lead to potentially fatal blood infections and heart damage. The bug is spread through casual contact, although it's not as easily acquired as highly infectious conditions like the common cold or influenza, said Dr. Sam Stebbins, the deputy health officer for San Mateo County's public health department.

Scattered cases of the infection that weren't contracted in the hospital have been reported during the past few years in San Mateo County, he said, and there was an outbreak among members of a wrestling team. Stebbins said county health workers have been saving samples of the bacteria from those infected to compare with samples from other regions to analyze how the bug is spreading.

Called methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, the virulent bacterium now only responds to two antibiotics "of last resort." It's long been a menace in hospitals, where the packed conditions dramatically increase the risk of patients developing a bacterial infection. Staphylococcus aureus is one of the most common hospital-acquired infections.

What's new is that infections from the drug-resistant superbug are showing up in adults who have never stayed in a hospital or haven't done so recently.

"That's the major change, and the worry," Charlebois said. "In the first patient that I knew about here in San Francisco, when we looked at his MRSA, it didn't look like the normal MRSA. It was highly resistant (to antibiotics)."

In the Bay Area, doctors have been seeing more cases in their general practices, said Dr. David Witt, an infectious disease specialist at Kaiser Permanente's South San Francisco medical center.

"Infectious disease people have seen that occasionally this is showing up in your normal practice," he said. Witt said he had two children develop the infection in the past year.

In Los Angeles, 932 cases of "community-acquired" MRSA have been reported, and 69 of those people required hospitalization as a result, Charlebois said.

The majority of these cases are among jail inmates, but clusters of cases have been reported among gay men in San Francisco and Los Angeles. The exact number is unknown, as the disease isn't reported to health officials, although San Francisco health officials hope to get a handle on the size of the outbreak through their new surveillance program, which asks that San Francisco physicians report any skin conditions that are proving difficult to treat.

While the method of the bacteria's spread is under investigation, medical authorities speculate that gay men could be contracting the infections through sexual encounters or in shared facilities like gyms and steam rooms.

"It's really rampant," said Dr. Bill Owen, a primary care physician in San Francisco with a gay and HIV practice. "'We've seen 10 or 15 cases in the last couple of months," he said.

An L.A. physician said some of the boils and abscesses appeared suddenly, grew rapidly and were far more virulent than previous staph infections he had seen. "This is a nasty bug," said Dr. Peter Ruane, whose patients are also mostly gay men and those infected with HIV. "Some of these infections take your breath away."

In San Mateo County, health officials added MRSA to the list of diseases reported to the county by doctors, so the disease has been carefully tracked in that county, Stebbins said.

These new outbreaks portend the spread of the disease into the rest of the community, the health experts said.

"That's how epidemics start. They start in small clusters," said Charlebois.

"What we're going to see, at some point, is this is going to spread to a broader part of the population," Kaiser's Witt said.

Witt emphasized that the current MRSA outbreaks are the price of the widespread misuse of antibiotics.

"This is just one of the consequences of inappropriate antibiotic use," he said. Over time, highly adaptive bacteria evolve techniques to outwit antibiotics, which are initially extremely toxic to the bugs. But the more frequently the drugs are used, the faster the bacteria evolve strategies to disarm them.

For example, in the early 1950s, penicillin was effective against staph bacteria, but by the late 1950s, it was ineffective.

Only two powerful antibiotics, vancomycin and linezolid, work against MRSA.

The New York Times contributed to this report.

[carlo3b]

Guns don't kill children GAYS do!!!

In one year, 1999-2000 the Center for Disease Control (CDC) reports indicate that sexually transmitted AIDS took the lives of 2896 children under 13 alone, and many 10's of thousands more under under the age of 19! It is not argued that the proliferation of AIDS and related diseases are overwhelmingly spread by practicing the sexual proclivities being promoted and encouraged into the curriculum in our nations public schools, and throughout our society!

At that rate, in 3 years the lifestyle being promoted by the compassionate Homosexual community is responsible of more death in underage children in the USA, than all the guns since the invention of GUNPOWDER!!
GAY PRIDE INDEED!!
 

[nastypumps]

How right pun not intended) you are! Why are people who profess to be so repelled by a behavior also so obsessed with it that their posts practically write themselves?
If these predictably ranting posts spoke of Black, disabled or other real or manufactured "groups" in terms as denegrating as those here about Gay people, the site watchdog whould rightly edit them out.
Trash talkers, hate mongers & the chronically obsessed with sex are doing terrible damage to the truly important causes FReepers like me are in the streets & organizations of this nation fighting for against the forces of the anti-American "new" left--democracy, liberty, fairness, equal treatment under law & much, much more. Every time one of them spews 4 letter, adolescent bilge around we have to defend ourselves even more.
I'm a disabled Gay women old enough to be a grandmother & I'm sick of the lot of them. In the numerous battles I & a brave, small, dedicated dozen or so "straights" have fought against up to 150,000+ America haters at a time in the streets of California (not to mention all the other states) over this last year, who among these posing posters has had the guts to join us?
None that I know of.
Cowards hiding behind keyboards are the really dangerous infections on our national skin.

[dfwgator]

How long until they start blaming Bush for this?

[rwfromkansas]

They are causing folks like ME to have their health endangered by habits encouraging bacteria resistance.

I have an immune deficiency in the upper respiratory tract, so I almost always need antibiotics to get over sinus infections etc. I have noticed in the past couple years that antibiotics have been less effective than the past.

It is due to these losers popping pills like there is no tomorrow that such is the cause. They let the bugs become resistant. Another problem is people taking half their antibiotic and then quitting.

Such should be a federal crime carrying a mandatory death sentence, in my opinion. All Americans are seriously endangered health-wise by such behavior and anyone who does that is a threat to national security and should be exterminated and extricated from the human race. If I was in Congress, I would lead the charge for such a law. These selfish bastards do not have my sympathy when MY HEALTH is on the line.

[rwfromkansas]

I will pray for your soul.

[ladylib]

This type of nonsense has to stop. What was wrong with the principal????

How can a teacher get away with asking kids to go to a hospice without parental permission and how can a principal condone it?

Parents have to stand by their kids and let them know that the public schools don't run their kids' lives and if they fail a course because they don't give in to some loony teacher's demands, that's okay too.

[Lady Heron]

Once again, fresh, raw rhetorical meat for the virulent bigots around here to come out and chew on. I only wish this were a hair less predictable. I knew what the first ten replies would be in this thread before I saw them.

Oh, brother! If HIV had been treated like any other deadly disease (isolated), it would not have spread so far and wide and so many "filthy sodomites" would not have died or been a threat to the population at large.

The "bigots" around here see what political correctness has done to them and has the potential to a much larger vector of the population. They are a part of the population that has been allowed to become a pitre dish for mutation of diseases instead of heading it off at the pass before it became so spread in the population as not to be controlable. Just because it is warned about in the Bible does not make them a "Bigot". Just one more proof of the accuracy of the Bible.

[Lady Heron]

Trash talkers, hate mongers & the chronically obsessed with sex are doing terrible damage to the truly important causes FReepers like me are in the streets & organizations of this nation fighting for against the forces of the anti-American "new" left--democracy, liberty, fairness, equal treatment under law & much, much more. Every time one of them spews 4 letter, adolescent bilge around we have to defend ourselves even more.

Excuse me, but as a parent I have a real problem with the gay agenda being pushed at our children. As long as you are not pushing the agenda in my face and are not trying to bring more children into the life style of death, I could care less what you do behind closed doors.

Have any of the gays ever cared what other lives they are shortening every year. All I see are some very selfish people only intrested in their own satisfaction, who could care less how many more they bring in to that deadly cycle. And you think we are spewing adolescent bilge. Where is the responsibiltiy on your side? Our responsibility is to raise our kids and try and give them a way to lead happy healthy lives, all I see in the gay life style is the road to sickness and death.

[avenir]

Rarely will you find a Biblical view of sin here. You will find moralism, with all its selective condemnation. The Bible condemns everyone (before offering Jesus as our hope and cure).

Homosexuality is a favorite sin target because it affects the least number of posters. Divorce, a sin which affects a much larger number, is rarely considered worthy of mention, let alone slander.

But where does societal decay first begin, if not in the homes of normal sinners who "did not give thanks"? (See Romans)

[carlo3b]

It is worse than we think. All these folks can think of is how and when to unzip, without consequences. Of course, we don't get a choice, ....that would be judgemental! STUFF IT!

[nastypumps]

Let's deal first with the most urgent problems that are "killing" your children or at least their futures: degenerate, vicious sexuality of games plus rap & other performing "artists" (sic--literally!); crude, lewd, rude TV shows/films glorifying promiscuity & violence of every type; the pathetic failure of half of all marriages; mass abortions, teen sex, dead-beat parents; the corruption of religions by hucksters & criminals; rape & domestic strife; Dads tralling for drug addled, VD-riddled hookers on the back streets of every town & city in America; illegal immigration; unemployment; debt & credit card slavery & the near total dumbing down of your childrens' educational institutions. (WE didn't do all of this, sweeties, there just aren't enough of us to cause such a mess!)
First things first: One media mogul, corrupt politician, thieving Fortune 50 CFO, off-shore employer, bullying classmate, bi-lingual program run by a teacher who reads at a grade school level or local drug pusher is a far worse threat right NOW to your child & to your way of life than the world's total population of Gay people.
Rest easy, as a card carry, life member of the club I can assure you there is no "Gay Adjenda". We aren't recruiting your children; we are your children.
Ask yourselves why you focus so much energy on so small a # of people...why you are encouraged to do so...why you being diverted from the real threats.
I don't get it. Posters here know all the horrors I've named (& more!)exist. If you care, why don't you get out, into your streets & schools & workplaces to fight against them? To rid our nation & your lives of the assorted peddlers of failure & death your kids (and you)face daily?

[carlo3b]

Nice try jerk, but no cigar...  As for why we concentrate on your minuscule numbers, is because your message is IN YOUR FACE 24/7... I could care less how soon you kill each other, but your lovers now want my kids... and I for one am taking a stand!
Go back into the closet freak, and leave the rest of us alone!! You will never get the acceptance you appear to so desperately need because we normal folks, with scares and all, would never stoop so low as to do the sick stuff you perverts do and will never accept it as normal or even abnormal.. it's GROTESQUE!!
What your fun loving community is doing now is Murder, and as far as I am concerned, and I know I speak for the greatest majority of Americans, I would throw every AIDS and HIV carrier into solitary confinement until you have to explain you story to your maker!  If you don't believe my contention, about your low station on the life cycle of your fellow FREEPERS, lets take a vote, and let the ballots do my talking!

[Mamzelle]

re: a local Hospice center, overwhelmingly stacked with these poor fatally ill AIDS sufferers!)))

Interestingly enough, those kids with their powerful public school germs were probably not all that helpful in the hospice...

These resistant bugs are already in the hospitals. We've got tequin, but what happens when that fails, too?

[carlo3b]

Great point, I just think it is inappropriate to expose these kids especially without the parents knowledge! Our public schools are failing and they spend an inordinate amount of time on senseless liberal nonsense already.
What in the world is a school doing promoting this sort of stuff anyway... they would never take a field try to a church to help distribute the food and clothing to the truly needy!

[Lady Heron]

Rest easy, as a card carry, life member of the club I can assure you there is no "Gay Adjenda". We aren't recruiting your children; we are your children.

Bull!!!

[PoisedWoman]

Many thanks for mini-review of Death in the Freezer....here's a link to amazon.com listing for anyone who wants to follow up.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0375508562/qid=1045089909/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/002-5198717-8421604

Why am I not amazed that the Frahnsh "sophisticates" built Iraq a smallpox lab? How many other deals are they in together?

[MHGinTN]

Trash talkers, hate mongers & the chronically obsessed with sex ... Yup, describes homosexuals pretty well. [Pssst, nastypumps, sex is not the most important activity in one's daily routine ... at least, for healthy individuals.]

[sakic]

I don't know why you sent your posting to me but I assure you that after reading your posting I can't imagine anyone wanting any of your kids unless they were looking to contract a serious mental disease or rabies.

[carlo3b]

It's ok, you'll learn some day, I only hope..really.. that it isn't too late. Sorry if it bothered you, I'm trying to wake up the soon to be dead.

[sakic]

What makes me the soon to be dead?