Drug Resistant Infections on Rise in Hospitals
December 10, 2009
NautralNews
by Paul Louis
The CDC has declared staphylococcus aureus infections are increasing to the point that 20,000 people a year die from staph infections, usually when the bacteria infiltrate the bloodstream or lungs. Many survive staph infections in wounds when they are simply skin deep and cause irritations.
Compared to the figure of 14,000 who died from AIDS in the year 2007, the staph infection death toll should be a public concern. Perhaps the lack of publicity is due to the fact that most serious staph infections are nosocomial infections.
Nosocomial refers to infections that are received from hospitals and clinics, often as post surgery complications aside from the original health problems being treated. They are also more commonly known as hospital infections. According to the CDC, 63,000 die annually from nosocomial infections, including staphylococcus aureus. In European hospitals and clinics secondary infections are even higher.
Staphylococcus aureus or staph is not to be confused with the dangerous and similarly named Streptococcus. Staph tends to be resistant to penicillin. So along came Methicillin to the rescue. But now some staph strains have become resistant to methicillin. The new super bug strain is known as MRSA, or methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus.
There has also been an increase in community based staphylococcus aureus as well. It’s estimated that 20 percent of the population are long term staph carriers. Usually these staph strains that reside on the skin or in the nose are less virulent and can be cured with most antibiotics.
However, the antibiotic resistant super bugs are mostly passed on from hospitals. A study conducted by Resources for the Future analyzed data from over 300 hospital microbiology labs across the country. They found a seven-fold proportional increase with community associated strains of MRSA at outpatient hospital units between 1999 and 2006. Their study was published in Emerging Diseases.
Health care professionals and patients alike are often required to move between inpatient and outpatient facilities. This is suspected to have created a sort of “cross pollination” effect with the MRSA super bugs. On a positive note, it’s now known that sometimes MRSAs can be handled with cheaper antibiotics than penicillin or methicillan.
Hospital-Acquired Superbug Infections Soar in Newborn Babies
July 10, 2009
Natural News
by Sherry Baker
It’s scary enough to have a newborn baby in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) because he or she is premature or has health problems. But now there’s reason to worry that many NICUs, places that are supposed to be dedicated to healing and protecting the youngest and most fragile of babies, are actually dangerous environments for neonates. According to a new study just published in The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, superbug infections — specifically antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections — in US NICUs increased over 300 percent in less than ten years.
Researchers Dr. Fernanda C. Lessa and colleagues at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) used a national database on hospital-acquired infections and analyzed data voluntarily reported by NICUs between the years of 1995 and 2004. In all, the study involved information collected on nearly 5.9 million patient-days in 149 NICUs across the country.
In newborns, infections that occur during the first three days of life are most often acquired during labor and delivery. On the other hand, late-onset infections, defined as infections that developed more than three days after a child was born, are known to be primarily transmitted by parents, doctors, nurses and other health care personnel. The investigators focused on late-onset infections and found that out of about 4,400 Staph infections with antibiotic resistance, 23 percent were found to be the result of a MRSA superbug.
From 1995 to 2004, the rate of late-onset MRSA infections soared from less than one for every 10,000 hospital days to three infections per 10,000 hospital days — an enormous increase of 308 percent. The types of MRSA infections were not found to change during the years studied. About 30 percent involved bloodstream infections. Other frequent kinds of MRSA infections that were identified included pneumonia and eye infections (conjunctivitis).
For some reason, the steepest rise in MRSA infections occurred after 2002. While the tiniest babies with extremely low birth weights of 1,000 grams (about 35 ounces) had the sharpest increase in MRSA infections, the superbug infection rate actually rose in all birth weight groups.
The ever increasing rate of superbugs has become a worldwide public health problem, with Staph bacteria developing resistance to commonly used antibiotics. MRSA infections have increasingly been found within communities and not just in hospitals. However, in the new study the Staph strains found in NICUs were clearly in the class of superbugs responsible for hospital-acquired infections, not those which have been reported in the non-medical community setting.
So what’s the bottom line result of the study? According to researchers Dr. Fernanda C. Lessa and colleagues at the CDC there is clearly a need for healthcare workers to follow routine infection control steps that are already well-known to be effective in preventing the spreading of MRSA infections. They aren’t high tech chemicals or vaccines, either. Instead, the most important is simple hand washing.
As reported earlier in Natural News, one approach to fighting superbugs in hospitals has already backfired. A study showed that instead of killing potentially dangerous infections, disinfectant wipes may actually spread drug-resistant and sometimes deadly bacteria.
Click here for the full report and links from NaturalNews.com
