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.
I was not aware of that.
I certainly agree with you regarding the misuse of antibiotics. Scientists have been warning about this for some time. Seems their worst fears are materializing.
Vancomycin was a last ditch drug, and apparently it's not working on some newer strains of staph.
It's illegal immigrants and too many 3rd world immigrants that are bringing in nasty stuff they have adapted to but we haven't, the Indian-smallpox effect. We used to quarantine immigrants to prevent this stuff. Could also be some of Saddam's handiwork too.
Hey...I represent that.
Sorry.
LauraJean, you are right! When people started being so sterilized with antibacterial soaps and cleaners, the bacteria just got resistant and people got weaker. Also, antibacterial soaps can suppress the thyroid.
Is it possible that new horrors like this originated and/or are spread by all the foreigners flooding in from everywhere else and establishing foreign enclaves in our society?
Multiculturalism anyone?
"... then saw 459 in 2003, with 90 percent in healthy children. "
The first thing that comes to mind is the possiblity that the children are in daycare facilities that routinely wipe surfaces down with anti-bacterial cleaning solutions.
Then inevitably some bacteria survive and get stronger over time. They then carry these bacteria back to homes, playgrounds, schools, etc.
Did you read this?
"Did you read this?"
UH, I hope so. I thought I posted it.
Tijuana tetracycline.
Tetracycline didn't cause resistance by Staph to the whole class of penicillins. Bacteria sensitive to penicillins acquire the gene to produce penicillinase or beta-lactamase. Here's a complete article on antibacterial resistance. I haven't read it. I'll take a look at it.
Obviously, I was making a more general statement referring to the over-use of easily obtainable and poorly monitored antibiotics in Mexico to breed tetracycline resistant strains that were then carried in by illegals to emergency rooms in America thence to breed into yet more virulent strains, the scariest one being vancomycin resistant staph.
err.....not that simple...
MRSA can be found in your blood, your urine, your wounds or your lungs....
no one is quite sure how it passes....
but,I surmiss, that it is an opportunistic disease that most of us already have in us or on us....
young footballers have been known to get it, and they had nothing to do with hospitals...
Opportunistic infections are infections that happen to individuals with incompetent or damged immune systems such as HIV/AIDS, diabetes, cancer chemotherapy, inherited immune deficiencies and chronic alcoholism. Folks with competent immune systems are not susceptible to them. These Staph bacteria developed resistance to the whole class of penicillin (antibacterial) antibiotics.
LOL
Leave it to me to mess up a post, should have taken your
name off the header........
It is a good article and I thank you for posting it, never
had any doubt that you had read it.
I had told Alabama Mom about the disease, last week and wanted to be sure that she saw the article.
It is a disease that was going around the world, maybe 3 or 4 months ago, in several countries, Canada was one of them.
bttt
My big problem with that is you are making the rest room a big mess for the next person. All those paper towels all over the floor are disgusting. I am one of those people who takes the time to use another paper towel and pick up the ones you've dropped. Throwing the germs on the floor is not an answer, plus if you've ever had to clean a bathroom after a group of people have been in there, you would appreciate people not throwing paper towels on the floor. Maybe you should invest in long sleeves.
First, nurses don't prescribe medications (unless they are a nurse practitioner, and even then it is under the supervision of a physician). Second, upon my completion of RN school 15+ years ago, I distinctly remember being VERY well aware of drug-resistant germs (most nurses are compulsive when it comes to preventing nosocomial infections; it's ingrained into us at nursing school). 3. The reason people get antibiotics for colds is because it's much easier for the doc to write out the script, than it is for that doc to put up the brick wall, and field the daily phone calls from that patient until he/she receives their antibiotic. It's certainly not the right thing to do, it's just the easiest. I don't agree with it, given the increasing incidence of drug-resistant bugs, but that's the way it is in the real world.
I have a friend who almost died of M.R.S.A. earlier this year after a routine colonoscopy.
--I'm 63, by the way---
It wasn't until after I sent my post that I realised you noted your post as sarcasm.
Wish I was 63 again---God,time goes by quickly,doesn't it?
---actually, this approach to middle age isn't as bad as I thought it would be at twenty----
Good attitude---LOL
Darlin',
Keep in mind, one day too, you will be old, and a geezer.
There is only one way to avoid it ;)
----yep---but I'm not going to sit around the senior center damning the drug companies for expecting payment for the stuff that's keeping me alive----
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