MRSA Notes

Retapamulin belongs to a new class of antibiotics called pleuromutilins and is being developed for the topical treatment of uncomplicated skin and skin structure infections due to susceptible strains of Staphylococcus aureus or Streptococcus pyogenes.
“A growing cause of many community and hospital-acquired infections are gram-positive bacteria, such as streptococci and staphylococci, and their resistance […]

I had great visions of keeping up with my blogging here through Christmas, even with my family here visiting, but, naturally, it didn’t quite work out that way, so I am here hoping you all had a wonderful Christmas and finish out the […]

CDC targets stubborn germs in hospitals — Newsday.com
U.S. health officials are preparing new hospital infection control guidelines to slow the growing spread of bacteria that has become resistant to antibiotics. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will release the new […]

Our friend Bev Hurst, from MRSAActionUK is featured in the Manchester Online Newspaper: Health bosses ‘too busy’ to investigate mum’s MRSA death
THE daughter of an MRSA victim has been told a health watchdog is too busy to review the case. Bev […]

Sean Hurst, age 15, passed away on Monday after a short battle with MRSA.  Our hearts and prayers go out to his family, who seem to have really been through an unbelievable amount of trauma this year.  God bless them, and remember how […]

From Milwaukee Journal Sentinal:
We’ve seen SARS-fearing Chinese strap on face masks and U.S.
consumers combat disease-spreading microbes with anti-bacterial soap
and towel-free hand sanitizers.
Now, a De Pere supermarket has mounted a new assault in the never-ending war. A Festival Foods store there is the first to install a Green Bay company’s apparatus for attacking the legions […]

Scotsman.com News - Health - 11p kitchen sponges may hold key to beating MRSA
Now biologists working on a powerful new antibiotic have found the best way to cultivate the cure is on the surface of an ordinary kitchen scouring pad - and strangely, one brand alone. The experts at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh […]

Facts from the NHANES (National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey) study, reported with comments from Tara Smith at her Aetiology Blog:
75 of the S. aureus-colonized individuals were carrying MRSA–.8% of the population, or about 2.3 million Americans. In this analysis, MRSA was […]

BJS at the ScienceBlog.com is reporting from the ISDA Journal about the prevalence of MRSA colonization in America’s nostrils, with the highest percentages in women and those over 60 years old.  Very interesting research, go give it a read!
Up Yer Nose: 2M Americans […]

The latest research included in the proceedings of the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC) means that antibiotic treatments and management therapies feature strongly in DrugResearcher’s round-up of the 4-day event.

The gathering is a chance for scientists
and cancer researchers, as well […]

Emergency room doctors gave the 20-month-old girl
with strawberry-blond hair standard antibiotics to treat a high fever
and mild rash that looked like windburn. Then they sent her home.
The
antibiotics were useless, however, because Gillian Young was ill with
what’s becoming a common antibiotic-resistant bug. The infection
quickly left pea-sized lumps all over her body and fluid on her lungs
and […]

Firefighters are trying to protect themselves from an aggressive,
flesh-eating bacteria. The number of firefighters contracting MRSA is
on the rise. In the past year, four firefighters in the Tucson area
have contracted MRSA. That may not sound like much, but physicians have
seen more MRSA cases […]

From Rome News - Tribune (Georgia):

“We’re seeing an emergence or reappearance in people that are not considered at risk,” Abercrombie said. “The problem is its antibiotic resistance and that many people — mostly adults — are having such severe skin infections that they […]

Slowly but surely, we are coming around.  I so hope this can happen without the legal system having to be brought in.  My Christmas wish, and New Years hope is that our country will realize that it can indeed make changes before we […]

New Drug Telavancin Tops Vancomycin in Patients with MRSA Skin Infections: Presented at ICAAC
A new drug in a similar class as vancomycin — a last resort antibiotic — appears to clear up dangerous methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) skin infections more effectively than standard […]

Well, I think this might be the first article I have seen from USA Today. I am thankful that such a nationally recognized newspaper is catching on!
Here is a snip from the article, read more by clicking the link below:
“The prevalence of this is so high, it has fundamentally changed the way physicians treat […]

WASHINGTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Dec. 18, 2005–Researchers at the 45th Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC) have presented new data today on the in vitro activity of several products and product candidates against strains of Clostridium difficile (C. difficile), including recently described epidemic strains that have shown increased virulence. The data are among the first to […]

Wrestlers infected with staph | www.azstarnet.com ®
“Staph is a skin germ, and think about a wrestler, with all that moisture and all that contact on the mat,” said Dr. Michelle McDonald, the Pima County Health Department’s chief medical officer.
“Any skin germ is going to take an opening in the skin. If you’ve got mat rub […]

Bisbee wrestling team asked not to attend upcoming meet due to health concerns | www.azstarnet.com ®
The Bisbee High School wrestling team will not compete in this weekend’s Douglas Invitational due to health concerns after one of the team’s wrestlers was exposed to staph bacteria during a meet in Safford two weeks ago.
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I just wanted you to know that I set up a program on the Superbug Wiki that is designed to stop spammers, as we were getting spammed on nearly a twice daily basis. If you have any problems doing any editing there, please shoot me an email and let me know, so that I […]

This is from About.com, which is one of my favorite reference web sites for almost everything. Unfortunately, they don’t have a good MRSA section, the only one they have is in reference to MRSA in children:
A study in patients carrying potentially harmful bacteria such as Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus pneumoniae and Hemophilus influenzae, demonstrated that […]

Basic MRSA information from the Billings Gazette (Montana):
An old bacterium with new skills has the Billings medical community on alert.
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, can cause life-threatening infections that are difficult to treat.
It can also live on a person’s body without causing any problems at all.
“You have more bacteria on your skin than cells in […]

The pressure is on from my dear friend Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lei at » Genetics and Public Health to be sure that all information about medical/health web sites is fully disclosed, so here goes:
1. Who runs this site? I do, Christina Jones, with assistance from Denise Rauff and Maureen Daly. We have all […]

Physician’s Weekly Article - Conquering the Problem of Antibiotic Resistance
This is a good article, but it seems to refute itself a bit–but who am I to say. The article is telling us about all of the new antibiotics out that are capable of killing the antibiotic resistant bacteria , which is important, but leaves […]

Research center seeks gay men for MRSA study | News | Advocate.com
The researchers are seeking gay men for their study that will gauge whether any of them are unknowingly carrying the virus. The study will include three visits to the Rockefeller University Hospital Outpatient Clinic on the upper east side of Manhattan, where a swab […]

BostonHerald.com - Local / Regional News: Prison critics rip medical care
The Department of Correction for months ignored the medical needs of a paraplegic inmate afflicted with a gaping, bacteria-ridden bedsore, forcing him to be hospitalized in an intensive care unit in Boston for a week, the inmate’s lawyer said yesterday.
Prison reform […]

The Epoch Times | Old Fashioned Remedies Effective Against Superbugs
I don’t hardly know which parts of this to excerpt for you, because the entire article is so interesting, so please go read it for yourself, if you are interested in the therapies for MRSA that were once called old fashioned, and now are called “alternative” […]

“At least six Deming High athletes — Wildcat wrestlers — have contracted Staph (Staphyloccus) Bacteria, and one has been hospitalized with a mutant strain commonly known in the medical profession as MRSA — “The Super Bug.”
Wildcat wrestlers were on a trip last weekend to the Safford Invitational Tournament in Safford Arizona when the infection was […]

I do love our Thursday chats - this week I got to catch up with Peg (zorsmom, if you have seen her around in the forum) and Cathy, both of whom I have not seen in the chat in a good while. Glad you both are feeling well enough to socialize these days!!!
Also, we […]

Seattle Weekly: News: Contagion in the Jail by Rick Anderson
County jail and health officials insist their aging 1,700-bed downtown King County Correctional Facility is safe, and they’re doing their best to keep it disease-free. But two superbugs have been discovered at the jail in the past 23 months, one of them continuously sweeping the population—and […]

Dr. Sean Elliot at University Medical Center is reacting to publishedreports in a Tucson paper about a bacteria called MRSA. The headlinereads, “Superbug that eats flesh is on the loose.”
“I cringed, the story would suggest this is a brand new, hot off thepresses of urgency and that’s not the fact at all,” Dr. Sean Elliott […]