New Threat: Antibiotic-resistant Bacteria Causes Deadly Pneumonia

July 18, 2009

Natural News

by S. L. Baker

While the talking heads on TV have recently reported that thousands of people in the U.S. are now infected with the new “swine flu”, or H1N1, there’s another infectious disease problem brewing that has received little attention. The over-use and abuse of antibiotics has produced antibiotic-resistant bacteria. According to the National Institutes of Health, over the past forty years, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus has changed from a usually controllable nuisance into a serious public health problem.

At first, it was primarily one of the most common hospital-acquired infections. But in recent years, new strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, often dubbed “super bugs”, have popped up in communities and caused severe, even life-threatening infections in otherwise healthy people, involving the skin, heart, blood or bones.

Now a paper just published in the June edition of The Lancet Infectious Diseases discusses an emerging and potentially deadly threat from community acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA) — necrotizing, i.e. “flesh eating”, pneumonia. And according to previous research published in Nature News, this type of pneumonia is fatal in 75 percent of cases.

Doctors at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta write in The Lancet Infectious Diseases article that CA-MRSA has become well known for causing skin and soft-tissue infections that are transmitted by person-to-person contact or contact with contaminated objects. However, now there are increasing cases of CA-MRSA caused pneumonia that kills lung tissue. And those becoming sick with the disease aren’t necessarily the old and/or physically weak. In fact, according to the report from the Emory team led by Alicia Hidron, MD, an infectious diseases fellow and Henry Blumberg, MD, professor of medicine and epidemiology at Emory, CA-MRSA pneumonia appears to most commonly affect young and previously healthy patients.

Dr. Hidron and Dr. Blumberg also noted in their paper that, besides causing a high fever, CA-MRSA pneumonia can sometimes cause low blood pressure that progresses to septic shock and requires patients to be placed on mechanical respirators in order to breathe. Another important point discussed in the article may turn out to have special relevance due to the emergence of H1N1 influenza, especially by the time flu season rolls around this fall: potentially deadly CA-MRSA pneumonia appears to occur most commonly following a flu-type illness.

Serious MRSA disease can strike anyone, regardless of age, health or where they live. Outbreaks have occurred among young athletes who play contact sports and among people living in close quarters, such as nursing homes, military facilities, nursing homes, and childcare centers.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases advises using these precautions to help prevent CA-MRSA infections:

• Practice good hygiene.
• Keep cuts and scrapes clean and bandage until healed.
• Avoid contact with other people’s wounds or bandages.
• Don’t share soiled or used personal items, such as towels, washcloths, razors, or clothes.
• Use hot water and bleach to wash soiled sheets, towels and clothes.

Click here for the full report and links from NaturalNews.com

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