MRSA Notes

I encourage anyone in New Jersey who has dealt with MRSA to get in touch with Ms. Campbell. These are great opportunities to spread the word about MRSA, and sometimes it is just plain therapeutic to talk about it. Ms. Campbell left a post on MRSA Resources, but here it is again:

I am a journalist for a major newspaper in New Jersey and I am writing about serious hospital-acquired infections. I would like to speak to patients who have experienced these infections or who have loved ones who have experienced serious illness from these superbugs. If you would be willing to share your story I would like to talk with you. Please contact me at ccampbellATstarledger.com. (Please use the @ sign.)

Feel free to leave a comment at MRSA Resources, or here, and I will make sure she sees it. You can email her at the address above, or me at christina@b5media.com as well.

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 prepare her for her reconstruction, MRSA attached itself to the spacers and she acquired an infection. Sadly, this is not the first time I have heard this story, my close friend got an infection during this same process. MRSA loves to create a biofilm on these prosthetic devices, they must absolutely be watched so closely, and even then it doesn’t always work.

Here is Ms. Muller’s story in the NY Post if you want to read a little more about it. The most important thing to get out of her story is that you must absolutely be so cautious when working with prosthetics, and always ask your doctor what they are doing to keep you safe from infection. This is one big reason why it is so important for hospitals to disclose their infection rates – so you can make an educated decision.

Great news in Illinois – from Jeanine Thomas, founder of the MRSA Survivors Network. She has been working so hard for hospital disclosure of MRSA rates, and has had a good measure of success this month:

Again this year I initiated MRSA screening and reporting legislation and in the last 3 months have been lobbying extremely hard in Illinois. The legislation has passed the House ( 108-0 vote) and Senate ( 46-4 vote) and going thru the House again before it goes to the Governor, who will hopefully sign it.

The bills – HB378 -SB233 mandates that all IL hospitals must screen all ICU units and other at risk patients in IL hospitals for MRSA and decolonize those who are carriers. Also the MRSA infection rates will be posted on the state dept’s website. This is the first state to do so and I hope other states will follow with similar legislation. It has been a very hard fight against some doctors and hospitals, plus the state health dept. who has opposed it, but I have great legislative sponsors. The IL Hospital Assoc. supports the bill. Finally, something will be done about this epidemic.

If the Governor signs my bill, then next year I plan to add even more legislation that will screen more patients for MRSA. IL had over 11,000 cases of HA-MRSA in 2006 and the IL legislature was stunned by the magnitude of the epidemic, which all states have. This has been a long time coming. [via email]

You know, it just makes me sick that people have to work this hard and actually have to have legislation to make hospitals take better care of their patients. But I am thankful that people Like Jeanine and like Betsy McCaughey are ready, willing and able. If you are working on something similar, please do keep us posted on your efforts – hopefully once the ball gets rolling, other states will follow suit a little easier. Or maybe all hospitals will decide to take the needed steps on their own. Well, we can all hope, right?

Rhoda has started blogging over at MRSA Story, about her family’s experience with MRSA. She hasn’t been at it too long yet – it will be easy to catch up and then you definitely will want to follow the story. If you would be interested in doing the same thing, please feel free to get in touch with me, I would be happy to set you up. I really believe that sharing your story is one of the most helpful things you can do for others with MRSA, and writing is sure less expensive than therapy.

You can read the archives of our MRSA story over there too, and can read the PDF version as well. Subscribe to Rhoda’s feed here.

Boston.com is reporting that four Connecticut prisons have reported MRSA outbreaks in recent days: York Correctional Institution in Niantic, Bergin in Storrs and Osborn in Somers. They have notified the Department of Public Health, and we all hope they are working to keep this under control. Interestingly enough, the article reports that some inmates are incorrectly being diagnosed with spider bites. I really can’t believe this is still happening so much, you know?

In the study of MRSA, the word biofilm comes up a lot. This is the problem with the plumbed pedicure units – a biofilm forms on the pipes. Have you ever had to replace the plumbing under your kitchen sink? Surely I am not the only one. The disgusting stuff clinging to the inside of your pipes is – you guessed it – a biofilm. Bacteria clump together and form a slimy coating on anything that will sit still and stay damp, and these bacteria, for some reason, are easier able to resist antibiotic therapy. This is much the problem with prosthetics and MRSA, and biofilm is what they try to battle when using titanium and silver in these prosthetics. Anyway, that is about all I know about biofilm, but Dr. Mark Shirtliff, of the University of Maryland Dental School knows a whole lot more, and has received a $1.25 million grant this month for research into how to stop biofilms from forming. The Montererey Herald has the story, and a whole heckuvalot of information about biofilms – check it out.

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Researchers are always looking for a new way to fight off these nasty bacteria. There is a very fine line between killing bacteria that are invading your body systems, and killing your body systems themselves. Therein lies the rub.

Hot on the heels of the protein research done at the University of Missouri that discovered proteins that were released from MRSA bacteria that disabled your immune system, comes this article, from Scientific American, which discusses the UK testing of proteins that boost your immune system in order to fight bacteria. To me, these two researchers sound like they are working on the opposite ends of the same process (a good thing if they meet in the middle with dead MRSA!), but you know I am just a normal ol’ gal, and am likely missing something. Anyway, for those of you interested in the gory details of this UK research:

Looking for new ways to attack these so-called superbugs, Hancock studied a group of short proteins, or peptides, that in high concentrations can kill bacteria.Concerned that the peptides might trigger sepsis, a potentially lethal condition brought on by bacteria in the bloodstream, Hancock administered them to infected mice. “What we found, in contrast, was they actually reverse sepsis,” he says. The only trouble was that they also caused allergylike reactions and killed healthy intestinal cells. So he and his colleagues engineered shorter peptides that they hoped would prevent sepsis without causing other complications.

They hit on a 13-amino-acid peptide, which they call an innate defense regulator (IDR-1). To test it out, they injected mice with IDR-1 either one to two days before or four hours after infecting them with VRE, MRSA or Salmonella. The treated mice were nearly twice as likely to survive infection, the group reports this week in Nature Biotechnology.

It really sounds to me like some strides forward are being made here. I like hearing something other than “finding a new antibiotic that will kill MRSA that won’t kill you.”

Dr. Joshua Perper, the Broward Co. Chief Medical examiner has released Anna Nicole Smith’s autopsy report:

From the police chief – No illegal drugs were found – nothing unusual found on hotel security video, nothing on Stern’s computer – accidental overdose with no other criminal elements present.

From Dr. Perper: Anna Nicole was suffering from a stomach flu in the days prior to her death, at the time of the autopsy they didnt know what was wrong. They took many cultures during the beginning of the autopsy process. Microscopic cultures showed no disease that could have caused death. A variety of drugs were found in her system, weight loss drugs, anti depressants and pain medications. She had injected either B12, HGH or another longevity drug into her buttocks. He affirmed the pain in her buttocks and her getting ill in the process of coming to the US – when she got to her destination she had a temperature of 105. She was given Tamiflu for her symptoms, an antibiotic (Cipro) and she refused to go to the doctor. She was given an ice bath, and took sleeping medication and went to sleep, with her temperature never rising again. Her symptoms improved over the next couple of days.

They went back to check for infection a week later – did a dissection of the buttocks and found severe scarring, and abcesses under the skin. They believe that a needle punctured an abcess that was under the skin, and infectious material reached the bloodstream and caused her high fever a few days prior to her death. No bacteria was found in the blood at the time of the autopsy, meaning that the Cipro was controlling the bacteria. At that point, they thought the infection was what killed Anna Nicole. Dr. Perper did not identify the bacteria found.

The 3rd week, they got the toxicology reports back, and found the high levels of chloral hydrate and metabolites, along with many other drugs, but not necessarily toxic levels of any one drug. Final cause of death is an accidental drug overdose, with contributing causes being her infectious abcesses, a viral intestinal infection and possibly the flu. It is not ruled a suicide, not enough of one particular drug was found. Her illnesses could have possibly made her body not be able to handle her over-self-medicating as well as it normally would have.

They have made no statement of what the bacterial infection was, I will update if and when that information is released.

Anna Nicole Smith, autopsy, Florida, infection, joshua perper, MRSA, MRSA in the U.S., overdose, PR & Media

Saskatchewan health officials want to warn their communities that although their infection rates are smaller than many other Canadian provinces, they are still as susceptable to MRSA as the rest of the world. Interesting as compared to the rates in Santa Clara County from earlier, Saskatchewan had 1.219 cases in 2005, which rose to 1,596 in 2006, with January 2007 reporting 152 cases already. One interesting thing I saw in this article that I hadn’t seen before are the “Five C’s” that increase risk of MRSA:

• Crowding
• Frequent Contact
• Compromised skin
• Contaminated surfaces
• Cleanliness

Good thing to consider in every situation you are in. Stay clean!

This story, from MercuryNews.com, is the story of Laura Debell, a Santa Clara County Jail inmate, who, during a 2 week stay in the jail in 2005, got a small wound on her leg that let to an internal MRSA infection that traveled throughout her body and set up shop in her spine. A similar story to many we have heard before. This article also goes on to examine the statistics of MRSA in Santa Clara County and the cost to the taxpayers.

Public health officials worry a lot about the little bug with the big name because it is expensive and difficult to cure: A course of treatment can cost up to $30,000 depending on the severity of the infection and the complications it can cause. And when people who contract the infection have no health insurance, like Debell, taxpayers bear the cost.

Last year in Santa Clara County, 3,079 people were diagnosed with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, nearly triple the number of cases in 2005. Local doctors are more aware of MRSA, accounting for part of that increase, local public health officials say. But better diagnosis can’t completely explain the spike in infections.

The picture, however, is much improved in the county jail, where infections rose only 5 percent in 2006 after a startling 17-fold rise the year before, thanks to better treatment and hygiene practices, public health officials say.

Aye yi yi – scary statistics, eh? On a good note, Laura Debell is thankfully recovering well from her infection, although she will have some lifelong residual effects from the infection in her spine. She has more time to serve, and they considered keeping her on a home monitoring program (for which she is eligible), but they are concerned that they won’t be able to keep track of her with all of her medial appointments. They are moving her to another jail – so keep her in your prayers.