Staph superbug now far more common in the
community
April 6, 2005, News-Medical.Net
Two
teams of experts are saying that a drug-resistant "superbug"
previously only found in hospitals is becoming more common in the
community and must be aggressively treated. They say that
Staphylococcus aureus, or staph, infections that are resistant to
methicillin and similar drugs can now be put into the category of
flesh-eating bacteria and doctors need to be aware of this and
exchange antibiotics at the first sign of trouble Scott Fridkin, a
epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and prevention,
the leader of one study, says people need to be warned that if they
have a staph infection that is not responding to treatment they should
go back to their doctor. He says that staph causes a lot of skin
infections and they are always difficult to treat but now there is a
staph infection that is biologically different and resistant to
first-line antibiotics. Staphylococcus aureus is usually harmless and
very common, found on skin or in the noses of about 30 percent of
people. It can cause stubborn problems such as boils and is often
mistaken for a spider bite and until now, most of the infections
caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA have
only shown up in hospitals. Fridkin says it appears that a
surprisingly high 20 percent of such infections may have come from the
community which was not the case a decade ago. Loren Miller of Harbor-UCLA
Medical Center led the second study which found that some cases of
flesh-eating bacteria are caused by methicillin-resistant staph and
they found 14 such instances over a 15-month period, and four patients
had no risk factors such as drug use, diabetes or hepatitis. Miller's
team said doctors must change their attitudes toward cases of
necrotizing fasciitis, the ìflesh-eatingî part of such a bacterial
infection, and check to see if methicillin-resistant staph is to
blame. Good hygiene, particularly hand washing, can prevent such
infections. In hospitals, MRSA resists almost everything but an
intravenous antibiotic called vancomycin. But so-called
community-acquired MRSA can be treated with a range of antibiotics
including doxycycline and cotrimoxazole, sold under the brand name
Bactrim.
|