MRSA Notes

Now it is making the mainstream media. Yesterday, the New York Times published this article touching on MRSA and the growing problem of antibiotic resistance:

Evolutionary overachievers, the bacteria “reproduce every 20 minutes, and each time there’s an opportunity for mutation, to select out for resistance,” said Dr. C. Glenn Mayhall, a specialist in infectious diseases at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.

The overuse of antibiotics has not helped.

“Doctors are prescribing them when it’s inappropriate, and often using more powerful drugs than necessary,” Dr. Mayhall said.

That problem, combined with the widespread prophylactic use of antibiotics in livestock, has given staph, not to mention other bacteria, ample opportunity to evolve into superresistant and superpersistent bugs.

“It’s part natural evolution, but we’re speeding it up by our behaviors,” said Nicole Coffin, a spokeswoman for the C.D.C. Unlike the resistant staph seen in hospitals, many of the strains being reported elsewhere can release a toxin, Panton-Valentine leukocidin, or P.V.L., that kills white blood cells.

It is time now to stop insisting that your doctor prescribe antibiotics, to consider allowing your body to fight when at all possible, and to be more aware of your personal hygiene than you have ever been before.

antibiotic resistance, antibiotics, CA MRSA, Infection Prevention, MRSA, New York

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