Skin infection spreads among gay men in L.A.

Los Angeles Times ^ | January 27 2003 | By Jane E. Allen

[Kay Soze]

With infections that outsmart powerful antibiotics on the rise, doctors and public health officials have long worried that they might face an outbreak of resistant bacteria that threaten large numbers of people. Now they've found it -- in Los Angeles County.

The large, painful skin infections started turning up early last fall among local gay men, then appeared with increasing frequency over the ensuing weeks and months. Although doctors found the symptoms alarming, it took a while to confirm a connection between these cases. Now they know they're facing an emerging epidemic of drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or, more simply, staph.

Although the outbreak seems confined primarily to gay men, doctors say at least one woman contracted the infection, probably from a male sex partner. Because they still know so little about the extent of the outbreak, they can't predict how many people it may eventually affect.

The infection, which causes nasty-looking boils, deep abscesses and widespread surrounding inflammation, has proved impervious to common antibiotics. Although it appears to be spread primarily by skin-to-skin contact, including sex, its origins and precise mode of transmission remain a mystery. Doctors treating it caution that it could also be contracted at health clubs, steam rooms and other warm, moist environments.

"The concern is this organism could spread to and cause disease in the community at large," said Dr. Peter Ruane, an infectious disease specialist in Los Angeles. "It seems to be able to attack normal skin in healthy people."

"Primary-care doctors and ER doctors need to know about this so that when they encounter these infections, they can prescribe a drug that's active against resistant staph," Ruane said. Treatment typically involves draining the abscess, culturing the bacteria to see what they are resistant to, then prescribing appropriate antibiotics.

Cases of drug-resistant staph, long recognized as a problem in nursing homes and hospitals, have increasingly cropped up in clusters outside those settings. But the current outbreak marks the first time resistant staph has been reported in the gay community, which doctors say gives it the potential to spread widely and quickly because many of their gay patients frequent circuit parties and bathhouses, engaging in sex with multiple partners.

[Kay Soze]

To comply with rules for posting LA Times articles I have limited my post to less than 1/5th of the entire article. - - - - Please be careful as now its job one of act up and homosexual activities to now spread this disease to the heterosexual population as quickly as possible.

Other wise we may one day realize why homosexuality is so very dangerous.

Homosexuals will forever be the ones to introduce and or accelerate the rate of infectious diseases into the human population.

[sheik yerbouty]

There is always the miracle drug, Trinoasitol. Very effective.

[Constitution Day]

Trinoasitol

LMAO!!!

[Tall_Texan]

So there IS a "gay plague"??

How timely.

[sheik yerbouty]

It would have saved Rock Hudson. He, as everyone knows, died from bad crack!

[Puppage]

LOL!!!!

[martianagent]

Dwight Eisenhower's theory wrt safe sex was that nobody ever caught any sort of a social disease while playing golf. Sounds like somebody needs to teach the idiots out in California about Golf...

[Argus]

the miracle drug, Trinoasitol

Please contact Rep. Pelosi so she can demand that this wonder drug can be made available to the gay community at government expense.

[Constitution Day]

Yep. Crack kills! :)

[DoughtyOne]

To: Kay Soze

There is always the miracle drug, Trinoasitol. Very effective.

2 posted on 01/28/2003 1:35 PM PST by sheik yerbouty
 

I'm sorry to have to mentnion this, but it's widely reported that at least in the homosexual community, they are staff resistant to Trinoasitol.

[ex-Texan]

The infection, which causes nasty-looking boils, deep abscesses and widespread surrounding inflammation, has proved impervious to common antibiotics *** it appears to be spread primarily by skin-to-skin contact, including sex *** [it may also] be contracted at health clubs, steam rooms and other warm, moist environments ***

All boils are nasty but some are more nasty than others.

[dawn53]

A form of drug resistant Staph is very common in hospitals and nursing homes. It mostly affects the elderly and patients recovering from surgery.

Probably the gay men that are getting this are immune compromised.

Here's a link about MRSA, the kind of staph that's common in hospitals.

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/hip/ARESIST/mrsafaq.htm

[Hans]

Please, please. I am of tender years. Should I be
hearing of this nasty business?

[GLDNGUN]

Homosexual activity leads to disease and death, while monogamous heterosexual activity leads to life. Forget God, NATURE abhors homosexuality.

[Godebert]

"Dwight Eisenhower's theory wrt safe sex was that nobody ever caught any sort of a social disease while playing golf. Sounds like somebody needs to teach the idiots out in California about Golf..."

Just what the golfers out there need......a bunch of rump-rangers prancing around the green.

[justshutupandtakeit]

How much more GAYity can this country stand?

[finnman69]

LMAO!

[classmuse500]

BUMP

Should they be considered a national health risk?

[Endeavor]

Look, antibiotic resistant staph could have resulted through any of a number of means, including the overuse of antibiotics for routine stuff by your very own physician, or your veterinarian, or the farmer down the road or because you demand that your doc give your kids an antibiotic because they have a cold.

You ever been in farm and ranch stores? They sell penicillin.

Seems to me this has shown up in the gay population due to several factors - their population group tends to be immunosupressed, they tend to have lots of sex with lots of partners -- allowing the organism to be easily spread on contact -- any contact, they tend to be on various rounds of antibiotics due to their susceptibility to infection (so do transplant patients and people undergoing chemo).

I don't condone their activities, but if you're trying to blame antibiotic-resistant organisms on homosexuality alone, then you might want to learn a bit more about microbiology.

Have they contributed to it? We don't know yet, but probably not any more than the other factors I've listed above.

[AngryJawa]

Another case of nature discriminating against homosexuals.