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WASHINGTON (AFP) — Two experimental antibiotics from the United States and Switzerland show promising results in fighting the methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) superbug, researchers said. US pharmaceutical Paratek said on Sunday a new class of antibiotic it has developed called PTK 0896 was 98 percent efficient in countering MRSA -- 5.0 percent more efficient than rival Pfizer's Zyvox drug -- according to its phase ii clinical trial on 234 patients, Switzerland's bio-pharmaceutical company Arpida said its Iclaprim drug administered intravenously was able to cure MRSA infection in 92.3 percent of patients. Arpida recently submitted Iclaprim to approval by the US...

A potentially fatal infection may be spreading to more students than ever before, but few school and county officials are tracking it. Sometimes called the “superbug,” methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, is a drug-resistant strain of staph infections that can be deadly if left untreated. While concerns about the blood-borne bacterial infection were once relegated to hospitals or the occasional locker room, reports of the infections continue to rise in schools across the country. “We’ve been seeing what we call the community-acquired strain of MRSA since 2001,” said Registered Nurse Sean O’Grady, who works in the St. Mary Medical Center...

Protecting Yourself From Nasty Superbugs: Suggestions From Mayo Clinic ScienceDaily (June 23, 2008) — Superbugs -- bacteria that are resistant to many commonly used antibiotics -- can seem scary. Antibiotic resistance means illnesses last longer, and the risk of complications and death increases. Many factors have contributed to the emergence of superbugs, including overuse and misuse of antibiotics. One superbug, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), has been a problem in health care settings for years. In this environment, the bacteria is spread from one patient to another via the hands of care providers or by contaminated equipment. Increasingly, MRSA is appearing...

LONDON (Reuters) - Disinfectant wipes routinely used in hospitals may actually spread drug-resistant bacteria rather than kill the dangerous infections, British researchers said on Tuesday. While the wipes killed some bacteria, a study of two hospitals showed they did not get them all and could transfer the so-called superbugs to other surfaces, Gareth Williams, a microbiologist at Cardiff University, said. The findings presented at the American Society of Microbiology's General Meeting in Boston focused on bacteria that included methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA. "What we have found is there is a high risk," Williams, who led the study, said by...

MRSA from farm animals found in humans in UK for first time By Harry Wallop, Consumer Affairs Correspondent Last Updated: 12:51AM BST 03/06/2008 Three people have been infected with a form of MRSA usually found in pigs, the first time any humans in Britain have been infected by an animal strain of the superbug. The variation has been found in farm animals and humans on the Continent, causing serious heart, bone, blood and skin diseases, as well as pneumonia. Dr Giles Edwards, the director of the Scottish MRSA Reference Laboratory, said three people in Scotland had contracted the strain, known...

Every day on Free Republic, there is one poster who goes to every single prayer site, and prays for all requests and needs. That poster is pandoraou812. She has prayed for hundreds of prayer needs. Today, Pandy needs OUR prayers. Her doctor called her an hour ago (on SUNDAY), and told her that the swab he took on her 'spider bite' last Thursday was positive for MRSA. (She feels that she may have been infected when she had a liver biopsy for Hepatitis C March 5.) The 'spider bite' appeared three days later. Please pray for her and her family...

SEATTLE — The King County Jail had 65...

The number of deaths linked with hospital superbug Clostridium difficile has soared in England and Wales, figures from the Office for National Statistics show. Between 2005 and 2006 the number of death certificates which mentioned the infection rose by 72 per cent to 6,480. Elderly people were most at risk from the bacteria, which caused more than 55,000 infections in NHS hospitals last year. It is thought that some of the increase may be due to more complete reporting on death certificates, but there has been a fiftyfold increase in C. difficile infections since 1990. Deaths citing C. difficile as...

LITTLE ROCK, Ark., Feb. 10 (UPI) -- Actor Roy Scheider, the star of such films as "Jaws" and "All That Jazz," died Sunday at 75 in Little Rock, Ark., his wife told The New York Times. Scheider, who lived in Sag Harbor, N.Y., died of complications from a staph infection, Brenda Scheider told the newspaper. Scheider had suffered from multiple myeloma. Scheider came to prominence in such '70s films as "Klute" and "The French Connection" -- for which he earned an Oscar nomination as Buddy Russo, the partner of police Detective Popeye Doyle, played by Gene Hackman. Scheider may have...

Muslim women working at U.K. medical facilities are increasingly refusing to comply with the basic hygiene standard of rolling up their sleeves when their washing hands, it was reported. According to the U.K.'s Daily Telegraph, female workers are ignoring Britain's Department of Health rules requiring medics to be "bare below the elbow" because they consider showing any skin — outside the hands and face — immodest. The guidelines were put into place to stave off the spread of infectious killer bugs like MRSA and Clostridium difficile, which have been implicated in the deaths of hundreds of hospital patients, according to...

Muslim medical students are refusing to obey hygiene rules brought in to stop the spread of deadly superbugs, because they say it is against their religion. Women training in several hospitals in England have raised objections to removing their arm coverings in theatre and to rolling up their sleeves when washing their hands, because it is regarded as immodest in Islam.

Washington DC, Jan 29, 2008 / 04:40 am (CNA).- Some conservative groups are alleging that news of a microbe resistant to multiple drugs and found disproportionately among homosexual men is being suppressed due to hostile “politically correct” reactions, Cybercast News Service reports. Researchers recently announced the discovery of a new form of MRSA, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, an infection that is 13 to 14 times more prevalent in homosexual men than the general population."These multi-drug resistant infections often affect gay men at body sites in which skin-to-skin contact occurs during sexual activities," said Binh Diep, the University of California-San Francisco scientist...

(CNSNews.com) - Conservative groups say the truth about a new "multi-drug resistant microbe" prevalent among homosexual men is not being presented to the public because of political correctness. Almost two weeks ago, researchers announced they have isolated a new form of MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, an infection that is spreading through San Francisco's homosexual community and could spread to the general community. "These multi-drug resistant infections often affect gay men at body sites in which skin-to-skin contact occurs during sexual activities," said Binh Diep, the University of California-San Francisco scientist who led the team that made the finding. In...

You can’t help but feel a little sorry for Amanda Beck. She’s a reporter from Reuters who was among the first to cover a new study conducted by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, which warns about an outbreak of a virulent, drug-resistant, and potentially deadly strain of Staph infection afflicting certain segments of the homosexual community. Although outbreaks of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, have primarily been confined to hospitals in the past, the study determined that, due to “high risk behaviors” beyond hospital walls — such as “anal sex” — men who have sex with men...

Most infections outside hospitals are from a single, robust form, study says WASHINGTON - One single strain of bacteria is causing most cases of drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus found outside hospitals in the United States, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.The USA300 strain of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA is extraordinarily contagious and robust, the U.S. government researchers said.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 22 /Christian Newswire/ -- Because Concerned Women for America (CWA) cares deeply for the health and well being of all Americans, CWA is sending letters inviting the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, GLAAD and Lambda Legal to put aside profound ideological differences with CWA — for the sake of the lives and health of their members — and to call for commonsense steps to help curb the spread of a potentially deadly strain of Staph infection. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA bacteria, is infecting men who have sex with men in major...

<p>On Monday, a team of researchers led by doctors from the University of California at San Francisco announced that gay men were “many times more likely than others” to acquire a new strain of drug-resistant staphylococcus, a nasty, fast-spreading and potential lethal bacteria known as MRSA USA300. And sure enough, the study, published online in the Annals of Internal Medicine, was quickly picked up by reporters round the world and across the Internet, including a London tabloid which dubbed the disease “the new H.I.V.”</p>

(NewsTarget) Nearly five percent of patients in U.S. hospitals may have acquired a particular antibiotic resistant staph infection, according to a nationwide survey conducted by the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC). Researchers surveyed a total of 1,200 hospitals and other health care facilities from all 50 states, and found 8,000 patients infected or colonized with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) -- or 46 out of every 1,000. This suggests that up to 1.2 million hospital patients across the country may be infected every year. Colonized patients are those who were found to be carrying the bacteria in...

(CNSNews.com) - A drug-resistant strain of a deadly staph infection found in some U.S. hospitals is now spreading among homosexual men, researchers said. A conservative group has characterized the problem as the result of "unnatural behaviors." Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, killed about 19,000 Americans in 2005 -- most of them in hospitals, according a report published in October in the Journal of the American Medical Association. But now the infection is popping up outside hospitals in San Francisco, Boston, New York and Los Angeles, according to Reuters. "The medical community has known for years that homosexual conduct, especially among...

to antibiotics, is now spreading among homosexual males in San Francisco, Boston, New York and Los Angeles, according to a new report in the Annals of Internal Medicine. "Due to liberal political correctness, which insists on treating aberrant – even deadly – behaviors and lifestyles as a 'civil right,' we as a society don't seem to have learned much from the AIDS pandemic," he said. He called it an "eerie reminder" of the first stories about AIDS. "It is unfathomable that after that plague, disease specialists and the media are now surprised at the correlation of a new infection with...