MRSA Notes

In case you missed it - April did an amazing job for CNN! Come join us in the MRSA forum if you would like support or just to talk about your experiences with MRSA.

Here is the transcript:

COOPER: It is a common germ that’s morphed into a super bug. In hospitals, it causes an estimated 2 million infections every year, and 90,000 deaths. And now it is spreading outside of hospitals.

That’s alarming a lot of people, which is why the experts are so worried — extremely worried, in fact.

Here is 360 M.D. Sanjay Gupta.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For April Frans, it began with small mysterious bumps on her skin. She had no idea where they could have come from. No recent scrapes or scratches could explain them. But soon they grew to become painful boils on her legs.

APRIL FRANS, MRSA PATIENT: I was embarrassed to go to the doctors because I thought they would tell me it was an STD.

GUPTA: A possible sexually transmitted disease, but she was happily married, not at high risk. Her doctors first concluded that she had a simple staff infection. Treatment was simple. Drain it, clean it, and take antibiotics. But it simply didn’t work. And it was only the beginning of what would be a two and a half year ordeal.

April’s mysterious ailment only got worse. During that time she gave birth to her son, Owen. She continued to develop painful new boils every month, some as big as golf balls.

FRANS: I had been through about 20 doctors, most of them diagnosed with it an ingrown hair, a spider bite, acne.

GUPTA: All of them wrong. All mistaken diagnoses. It wasn’t until last November when April’s condition was finally identified. Its true name, Community-acquired Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA. It’s a long name for a brand new kind of illness, or a bug, if you will, one that doctors know surprisingly little about.

FRANS: I’ve had some doctors say, well, it’s serious; and other doctors say, oh, everybody has it.

GUPTA: Confused by the mixed messages, April took her diagnosis and went in search of facts. She learned her superbug, MRSA, could be lethal.

While the vast majority of patients will develop skin infections, at least 6 percent will suffer from serious effects from the disease, such as infections of the blood, bone, or muscle, pneumonia, even death.

Take a look at this CT scan. You can you see part of this man’s abdominal wall had to be removed after it was destroyed by the infection. It is only treatable by rarer, often more expensive antibiotics. In many cases IV lines and isolation are required. Similar antibiotic resistant staff infections were once found only in hospitals where antibiotics are used in abundance. Now these new kinds of MRSA are spreading fast, even in people who rarely use antibiotics. For medical researchers, it’s an urgent challenge.

DR. SUSAN RAY, EMORY DIVISION OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES: We don’t know how it’s made the jump. The germ developed this resistance in the community and separate from the hospital.

GUPTA: One theory points to the misuse of antibiotics.

DR. JONATHON JACOBS, NY-PRESBYTERIAN WEILL CORNELL: I don’t think the spread of MRSA is surprising at all. Every time we use antibiotics inappropriately, they see what we can use against them, and the resistant ones tend to flourish.

GUPTA: And new strains with ominous names such as USA300 can spread quickly.

Interestingly, people could be carriers and infect others without showing any signs of illness themselves. Outbreaks have been reported in prisons, daycare centers, military barracks, gyms, and locker rooms, places where people live in close quarters, and potentially have poor hygiene and broken skin.

RAY: How is MRSA spread? We would like to know for sure so that we could stop it. Having active skin lesions is probably the most important risk factor for spreading to others.

GUPTA: No doctor can tell April if she’ll ever be truly cured, but she tries to contain the MRSA by washing her hands, wiping down surfaces, spraying disinfectant on doorknobs and toys. But despite her disinfecting rituals at home, her 1-year-old developed boils. He was hospitalized for three days.

FRANS: My friends couldn’t come over without wearing a gown and a glove to hold my son, which was very hard for me. Actually what went through my mind at that point was, it was all my fault.

GUPTA: In fact, experts say, spreading this new kind of staff superbug is common among families.

RAY: These are not parents that are neglecting their children or doing a bad job. This is just a very strong germ.

GUPTA: So how did April get infected in the first place? No one knows. Both her husband and their older child, 7-year-old Cathy, have been tested. Doctors say it didn’t come from them.

FRANS: It’s kind of hard because I don’t really know what it is, and, you know, there’s no real answer on what causes it or how I got it.

GUPTA: Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, reporting.

Awareness, MRSA in the U.S., PR & Media

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