Re: Staph Strain Infects More Healthy People

From: john (nospamoridiots_at_vaccine.com)
Date: 09/30/04 

Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 06:40:04 +0000 (UTC)

http://www.whale.to/m/necrotising_fasciitis.html

"MrPepper11" <MrPepper11@go.com> wrote in message
news:57cfd534.0409291635.5cbe3b74@posting.google.com...
> Associated Press 9/29/04
> Staph Strain Infects More Healthy People
>
> TRENTON, N.J. - Flesh-eating bacteria cases, fatal pneumonia and
> life-threatening heart infections suddenly are popping up around the
> country, striking healthy people and stunning their doctors.
>
> The cause? Staph, a bacteria better known for causing skin boils
> easily treated with standard antibiotic pills.
>
> No more, say infectious disease experts, who increasingly are seeing
> these "super bugs" - strains of Staphylococcus aureus unfazed by the
> entire penicillin family and other first-line drugs.
>
> Until a few years ago, these drug-resistant infections were unheard of
> except in hospital patients, prison inmates and the chronically ill.
> Now, resistant strains are infecting healthy children, athletes and
> others with no connection to a hospital.
>
> "This is a new bug," said Dr. John Bartlett, who chairs the committee
> on antibiotic resistance at the Infectious Diseases Society of
> America. "It's a different strain than in the hospital ... more
> dangerous than other staph.
>
> "Primary care physicians and ER doctors, they don't all know (about
> this) and should," he said.
>
> Bartlett, a professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine,
> treated three young Baltimore area women this year who got pneumonia
> from this community-acquired resistant staph. All had to be put on
> breathing machines, and one died, he said.
>
> The infections will be a hot topic at the society's annual meeting
> this week in Boston. The group has been warning that drug companies
> aren't developing enough new antibiotics to avert a crisis.
>
> Among the case reports to be discussed:
>
> _In Los Angeles, doctors at UCLA Medical Center treated 14 people with
> necrotizing fasciitis, informally known as "flesh-eating bacteria,"
> over a 14-month stretch through April. Three needed reconstructive
> surgery and 10 spent time in intensive care.
>
> "This is about as serious an infectious disease emergency as you can
> get," said Dr. Loren G. Miller. "We don't know how these people got
> the infection - there doesn't seem to be a common thread."
>
> _In Corpus Christi, Texas, doctors at Driscoll Children's Hospital saw
> fewer than 10 cases a year of community-acquired resistant staph
> infections in the 1990s, then saw 459 in 2003, with 90 percent in
> healthy children. Half were admitted to the hospital to get
> intravenous antibiotics; a few developed life-threatening lung and
> heart infections or toxic shock syndrome.
>
> _A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (news - web sites) study
> shows another new twist: The resistant staph strain caused pneumonia
> in 17 people, killing five, during last year's flu season. Only one
> had any risk factors for the infection.
>
> "Nobody dreamt when we were in medical school that this would ever
> enter the community," said Dr. Rajendra Kapila of University of
> Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Newark.
>
> He has treated several patients with the infections at University
> Hospital there, including an itinerant golf caddie who kept getting
> abscesses on his neck until he landed in the hospital two years ago.
> Kapila linked the infections to abrasions from the man's golf bag
> strap.
>
> In August, a man in his 40s with severe back pain turned out to have
> such a severe staph infection in his spinal cord he was paralyzed
> permanently, Kapila said.
>
> Dr. John Segreti, an infectious disease specialist at Rush University
> Medical Center in Chicago, estimates about 1 in 10 patients, some with
> prior health problems, die from the infections.
>
> Dr. Dan Jernigan, a CDC epidemiologist, said athletes, children and
> military recruits are at higher risk. They are more likely to get cuts
> and scrapes and share close quarters and items such as towels and
> soap. Another factor is overuse of antibiotics, which tends to kill
> weak bacteria and help hardier ones develop resistance.
>
> "Clinicians will have to think differently about skin infections,"
> Jernigan said. "We treat most skin infections without ever testing
> them."
>
> Testing will tell whether a strain is antibiotic-resistant, but the
> tests are expensive.
>
> There are no national statistics on these infections, but health
> authorities are debating requiring doctors to report them.
>
> CDC has reported on numerous infection clusters, including Colorado
> fencing club members, college football players in Pennsylvania and Los
> Angeles, and high school wrestlers in Indiana, and dozens of Pacific
> Islanders in Hawaii. Many patients were hospitalized, including most
> of the athletes. At least two outbreaks have occurred among Native
> Alaskans since 1996, with many cases linked to steam baths.
>
> In New Jersey, infection clusters were reported in 2003 and earlier
> this year involving two high schools and members of one family.
>
> In Stafford, Texas, Janet Johnson's 13-year-old son Nicholas had such
> a severe infection - apparently after a minor football injury last
> October - that he was hospitalized for 5 1/2 weeks and nearly died.
> The staph infected his lungs, blood and bones, destroying hearing in
> one ear and making it difficult to walk.
>
> "He was like a stroke victim," she said, but he's doing much better
> now thanks to extensive physical therapy, repeated surgeries and
> continuing use of antibiotics.
>
> -------
> On the Net:
> Infectious Diseases Society of America: http://www.idsociety.org

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