MRSA

I've been looking at the House and Senate Bills, and, on antibiotic resistance, they're not bad. Both bills would evaluate hospitals on hospital-acquired infection rates (although there's no mention of nursing homes, which are a significant focus of infection). This is good. The House bill focuses primarily on reporting of hospital-acquired infections. It's actually very specific, and there's an entire section dedicated to it (starting at p. 913). Hospitals would be penalized if they fail to report. Infections (and pertinent information, which includes resistance) would be publicly…
One of the thing we need to pay attention to during TEH SWINEY FLOO! is the role of bacterial infections in flu-related mortality: a fair number of the deaths ultimately could result from a secondary bacterial infection by organisms like Staphylococcus (including MRSA), Streptococcus, and some of the Gram-negative organisms. Unfortunately, this is happening in a significant fraction of cases: Nevertheless, the 22 cases (among 77 deaths confirmed to be from H1N1) emphasize that bacterial co-infections are playing a role in the ongoing pandemic, something that was not clear at first, the CDC…
In the midst of the concern about TEH SWINEY FLOO!, very few people (other than the Mad Biologist), have been discussing the double whammy of influenza followed by bacterial infections. A couple of years ago, I first started describing reports of KPCs: No, KPC isn't a new fast food restaurant. It's short for Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase. The bad news: it's very hard to treat. The good news: it's very rare...for now. Actually, the correct term is KPC-possessing K. pneumoniae [these genes are now showing up in other bacteria], but we'll just use the slang 'KPC'--it's what all the cool…
I've been meaning to get to a really interesting article titled "Killing niche competitors by remote-control bacteriophage induction." So, let's talk about your nose. Two species that are found in the human nose are Staphylococcus aureus (methicillin resistant strains are called MRSA) and Streptococcus pneumoniae. Typically, only one species or the other is found: they usually don't coexist in your schnozz. One mechanism that S. pneumoniae uses to displace S. aureus is to make hydrogen peroxide, but it's unclear how this actually works, since hydrogen peroxide, at concentrations which…
A recent post about the looming specter of bioterrorism by William Lind due to 'biohacking' seems overblown to me. But before I get Lind, what I find particularly disturbing about hyping a non-existent bioterror threat is that it makes combating infectious disease--the stuff that kills millions worldwide--much harder due to unnecessary regulations and restrictions. Onto Lind: For years, I have warned in these columns and elsewhere that the future weapon of mass destruction we should most fear is not a nuke. Rather, it is a genetically engineered plague, a plague no one has ever seen before…
Tweet? (and not the internet kind). At the recent ASM meeting, I saw a poster presented by Mark Schroeder of Ohio Wesleyan University about the prevalence of methicillin-resistant staphylococci in wild song birds (the staphylococci include several potential pathogens such as Staphylococcus aureus and S. epidermis). Based on my notes (Note to wee lil' scientists: If you're presenting a poster, always bring lots of page sized copies. Always.), roughly ten percent of birds had staphylococci (I think they were isolated from the plumage, but I can't be certain). Among the mannitol-positive…
The Ethicurean has a superb interview with author Maryn McKenna about MRSA and agriculture. In the interview, the following question about MRSA transmission was asked: But isn't the industry saying that there's no definitive evidence linking MRSA in pigs to MRSA in humans? It depends on your standards of evidence. MRSA ST398 has been found colonizing pig farms and pig farmers in the US, Canada, and in the European Union. You can argue about how prevalent it is -- it's easy to cast doubt on whether it is common, because not very many studies have been done. But you can't argue that it is…
Always listen to the Mad Biologist. By way of Joe Windish at The Moderate Voice, we find out, just as I predicted, that the pork lobby would claim we don't know enough about the MRSA ST398 problem: Livestock scientists call the opinion piece "highly speculative", and point to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) statements on MRSA that say most if not all cases of MRSA come from person to person contact, not person to animal. The column also does not define this strain as one that is found on any swine farm in the vicinity of Camden, Ind. "They are making a huge leap…
I'm always loath to criticize mainstream discussions of the antibiotic resistance, particularly when the link between antibiotic use in agriculture and antibiotic resistance is raised. But, while NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof meant well, he missed the mark. In his column about MRSA ST398, he describes things that might happen. Here's one example: Public health experts worry that pigs could pass on the infection by direct contact with their handlers, through their wastes leaking into ground water (one study has already found antibiotic-resistant bacteria entering ground water from hog…
Nicholas Kristof has an interesting op-ed in the NY Times about the relationship between pig farming and MRSA. I'll be curious to see what he writes about in his next column, since he says, "This is a system that may help breed virulent "superbugs" that pose a public health threat to us all. That'll be the focus of my next column, on Sunday." I feel somewhat vindicated since this is a drum I've been beating for a long time; I've also been involved in efforts to curb the use of the antibiotic cefquinome in agriculture. The other good thing is that ScienceBlogling Tara, who has published on…
A notorious bacterial foe has made its first documented appearance in the U.S. and is jumping species around the farm scene. First, MSRA—methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus— was found in chickens. Just recently, research conducted by ScienceBlogger Tara Smith from Aetiology found that ST398, a strain found in pigs, was also found in many of the humans who came into contact with the pigs at a large food production farm in Iowa. While this strain seems to spread readily between animals and humans, its potential for lethal infections is still unclear. Related ScienceBlogs Posts: Swine…
I'm kidding, but ScienceBlogling Tara Smith has co-authored a PLoS One article about the emergence of the MRSA strain ST398 in Iowan pork farms. Pig farms are a tremendous reservoir of bacteria: as far as I can tell, there are about six pigs for every person in Iowa. MRSA ST398 a methicillin resistant S. aureus bacterium that has spread epidemic through various European animal populations (particularly pigs). It recently jumped from the animal population to the human population in Europe and has begun to establish itself there in hospitals. The last thing we want is for another MRSA…
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is very difficult to kill. This notorious "superbug" can withstand a broad and growing range of antibiotics, and is the leading cause of hospital infections in many countries. But it's not restricted to hospitals. According to studies coming in from all over the world, MRSA has found a new route into our bodies -piggyback. Pig farms throughout the world have become breeding grounds for strains of MRSA that can jump from swine to humans. These strains have already been isolated in the Netherlands, Denmark and Canada, and now, the latest study…
The emerging MRSA strain ST398 has found a new home--chickens. MRSA (methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus) was first found to have swept through European swine herds from 2003-2006. Then it entered the hospital system. In the U.S., it had not been observed in agriculture until very recently (it's ScienceBlogling Tara's fault--on a serious note, she studies this critter). It hasn't been seen in hospitals in the U.S. yet. What's disturbing is that a recent study from Belgium indicates that MRSA is on the rise in chickens and that it's due to ST398 (this isn't a trivial thing; most…
One of the key biological questions about antibiotic resistance is to what extent is the spread of resistance due to the evolution of new resistant strains versus the spread of existing resistant strains. With MRSA (methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus, it's been thought that epidemic spread of a few resistant genotypes (strains) is responsible for much of the increase in MRSA, as shown by this image of pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) done on a nationwide collection of MRSA: (from here) However, methods such as PFGE lack the genetic resolution to determine if gene transfer is…
There's no question that the ability to work with information is one that will be required and valued for a long time to come. I think it's imperative for teachers to have students practice this skill whenever an opportunity comes about. The problem for many teachers is finding the time to identify good data sets. MRSA stands for Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a serious problem for hospital patients. Six of out seven people who become infected with MRSA, get it from some kind of health-care facility. In 2007, the CDC issued a report claiming that 18,000 people die every…
I'm sure everyone else thinks the big news today is the announcement by the Washington State Health department requiring hospitals to report MRSA cases to the state. I think the cool news is their on-line database. We'll get to that a bit later. What is MRSA? MRSA stands for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. It's a serious pathogen that causes skin infections and greater damage if it enters the body. The Seattle Times report - a quick summary For the past three days the Seattle Times has been running a series on hospital-acquired cases of MRSA. According to the report, 6…
ScienceBlogling Revere links to a news article about high levels of VRE, vancomycin resistant enterococci in beach sand. While Revere and the article both describe how this indicates that VRE are established in the community, I think a far more chilling problem isn't mentioned at all: VMRSA. What's VMRSA? Vancomycin resistant MRSA (methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus). Every instance of VMRSA has involved an MRSA strain acquiring a plasmid (mini-chromosome) from a VRE strain. So far, most of these cases have occurred in Michigan. Apparently, the VRE strain that carries this…
How one views a recent article on the mortality due to antibiotic resistant infections depends on whether you're a glass half-full or half-empty type (me, I just worry about dropping the damn glass). A recent article in Clinical Infectious Diseases notes that there has been no change in the death rate due to antibiotic resistant infections in Staphylococcus aureus bloodstream infections, Pseudomonas aeruginosa pneumonias, and Escherichia coli urinary tract infections. The authors conclude (italics mine): We initiated this study to evaluate whether the impact of antimicrobial resistance on…
This is not good. A recent article in Emerging Infectious Diseases describes two separate cases of community-acquired ST398 MRSA--and neither case was associated with agriculture. Let me explain what this means and why this is really bad news. MRSA--methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus--is a serious problem: in the U.S., it kills more people annually than AIDS. Typically, the therapy used to treat MRSA is vancomycin, and strains resistant to vancomycin can't be treated on-label with any commercial antibiotics*. ST398 is a new clone of MRSA that is thought to be associated with…