MRSA Notes

I guess the whole world isn’t in to Project Runway like I am - but I have just read some spoilers for the episode coming up here in 15 minutes, and Ill be darned if one of the most lovable contenders doesn’t have MRSA. It’s amazing how my two greatest interests, beauty and MRSA, [...]

I received an email from Ms. Muller the other day - she is very concerned about MRSA, and has seen the ugly side of prosthetics first hand, and has a lawsuit going against her surgeon and the hospital involved.
She had a double mastectomy, and during one of her reconstructive surgeries, to put expanders in to [...]

I think the most important thing is that I can’t remember the last time I saw a staph infection that wasn’t MRSA

-Dr. Gal Mayer, medical director at the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center
Just like in the general populus, MRSA is growing rapidly amongst gay men in NYC. Gay City News has a very good article [...]

AARP is featuring an article, Dirty Hospitals, this month in their magazine. The article is chock full of sad statistics (”Some 2 million patients get a hospital-acquired infection every year.”), and features Dr. Betsy McCaughey, from RID:

A leading light of that movement is Betsy McCaughey, a health policy expert and former lieutenant governor of [...]

I frequently hear this question, and my answer is always the same - MRSA is transmitted by skin to skin contact, so certainly sexual activity provides the opportunity. Compounding the issue is the fact that MRSA likes to colonize in those warm, moist nether-regions. The subject comes up even more frequently when considering [...]

The New York Academy of Sciences is presenting a talk by Barry Kreiswirth of PHRI TB Center, Public Health Research Institute, on the changing epidemiology of MRSA. Here is the abstract for the January 17 talk:

Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has been the most clinically important nosocomial pathogen for the last 45 years; during [...]

Dr. Betsy McCaughey, a friend of MRSA Resources and founder of The Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths (RID), had an article published in the New York Times last week taking hospitals and the CDC to task and wondering why they haven’t made the simple changes which will drastically reduce these life threatening antibiotic resistant infections [...]

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 [...]

It is about time.  I have said it before, and will say it again.  Pennsylvania is coming around to seeing that MRSA is a force to be reckoned with, and needs to be monitored and prevented wherever possible.  Way to go, Pittsburgh!
From the [...]

From Milwaukee, WI - an article about the rise and dangers of CA-MRSA (community acquired methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus):
JS Online: The rise of a tougher staph
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that at least 12% of drug-resistant staph infections are [...]