MRSA Notes

Canada’s C-Health
is reporting news from the Canadian Medical Association Journal on the spread of CA-MRSA in Canada:

The drug-resistant forms of the bug that are spreading in the community - strains labelled USA300 and USA400 - generally cause hard-to-treat skin and soft-tissue infections, weeping wounds that will not heal. But they can also occasionally cause severe illness and even death in previously healthy individuals.

“It’s sweeping across the nation, no doubt about it,” said Dr. John Conly, senior author of one of the papers and a leading researcher on the scope of Canada’s problem with community-acquired MRSA.

And then the article goes on with a bit of history which, while well known to me, is good for all to know and understand:

Historically, infections caused by antibiotic-resistant strains of Staph aureus were transmitted in hospitals, where the heavy use of antibiotics has allowed a variety of drug-resistant bacteria to flourish.

But over the past 10 or 15 years, public health authorities in first Australia and later the United States and Europe reported the troubling emergence of a couple of virulent strains of MRSA that seem to have developed in the community, in people who hadn’t been hospitalized.

This is the strain that is attacking seemingly heathy youth and people, like my husband, who have been nowhere near a hospital and don’t have a clue that anything is wrong until it is very close to too late. Be aware of MRSA’s existance, and you are one step ahead of it!

CA MRSA, MRSA, MRSA Internationally

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