If you have heard the term MSSA in your MRSA research and didn’t know what it meant, I ran into a little article today that explains it very simply.
MSSA stands for Methicillin-Sensitive Staphylococcus aureus and refers to all of the antibiotic-sensitive strains of Staph aureus, a common bacteria that can cause a wide variety of infections both in hospital and community environments. In other words, MSSA is the common type of Staph aureus that causes most Staph aureus infections and can be treated with penicillin-type antibiotics. [Source]
A Staph infection is either one or the other - resistant to or sensitive to (I also hear it frequently referred to as ’susceptable’ to) antibiotics. I hope you all, like Cheryl who commented on this post, have only experience with MSSA. That is scary enough on its own.
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2 responses so far ↓
Nichole Blankinship // Nov 12, 2007 at 6:39 pm
This is statement is a bit misleading as there are several variants of MSSA that are also resistant to antibiotics. The difference between MSSA and MRSA and the antibiotic resistance is that MRSA is resistant to all methicillins. For example, I have had MSSA and the strain I had was resistant to penicillin and to erythromycin, yet was susceptible to methicillin hence titled MSSA not MRSA.
Mrs. Anderson // Nov 6, 2008 at 10:17 pm
I just spent 8 days in the hospital. I was bitten in the middle of the night. I am still very sick. I have a ruptured disk that had just had a shot of steroids, anti-biotics, and cortozone. I have arthritis and have been on humara shots, celebrex, [prednsone, and other medicine, my doctor had just given me a shot of cortozone in my hip. I had phenonia all summer and many diffferent kinds of anti-biotics for I am resistant . Come to find out I have a compromised immune system and could not fight off the bites.
These awful bites turned into bad looking sores, I could not walk, my blood pressure was 220 over 146 and I almost died. It turns out I picked it up from my mom who almost died from the very same situation in upper Michigan this spring when they called me for last rites. She made it but lost her colon to c-deph and MSSA she is now in a nursing home after being ill for 10 months and is missing a large chunck out of her back. I hope to get better but I can barely walk and feel sick. not my computer this has no spell check and I have to go I am sick with diarha yet
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