More People Dying Of Infections Acquired At Hospitals
February 23, 2010
Reuters
Pneumonia and blood-borne infections caught in hospital killed 48,000 patients and cost $8.1 billion in 2006, according to a report released on Monday.
The study is one of the first to put a price tag on the widespread problem, which is worsening and which some experts say is adding to the growing cost of healthcare in the United States.
“In many cases, these conditions could have been avoided with better infection control in hospitals,” said Ramanan Laxminarayan of Resources for the Future, a think tank that sponsored the study.
Sepsis — a blood infection — killed 20 percent of patients who developed it after surgery, Laxminarayan and colleagues reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
They studied hospital discharge records from 69 million patients at hospitals in 40 U.S. states between 1998 and 2006, looking for two diagnoses — hospital-acquired pneumonia and sepsis.
Patients who developed sepsis after surgery had to stay in the hospital on average nearly 11 days extra, at a cost of $32,900 per patient, they found. And just under 20 percent of them died.
Pneumonia patients stayed an extra 14 days after surgery, at a cost of $46,400 and more than 11 percent of them died, the researchers found.
“That’s the tragedy of such cases,” said Anup Malani of the University of Chicago, who worked on the study.
“In some cases, relatively healthy people check into the hospital for routine surgery. They develop sepsis because of a lapse in infection control and they can die.”
The researchers said that 1.7 million healthcare-associated infections are diagnosed every year.
Many are due to drug-resistant bacteria, such as methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA, which cost more to treat because only a few drugs can work against them. These infections can also be caught outside hospitals and some studies show that such community-acquired infections are also on the rise.
One estimate from Pfizer Inc suggested that treating MRSA alone cost $4 billion a year.
Measures to prevent infection are simple and include careful handwashing, hygiene and screening patients when they check in. However, these measures are difficult to enforce, many studies have found.
Click here for the full report.
New Superbugs Coming from China
February 8, 2010
Telegraph.co.uk
By Peter Foster
Chinese doctors routinely hand out multiple doses of antibiotics for simple maladies like the sore throats and the country’s farmers excessive dependence on the drugs has tainted the food chain.
Studies in China show a “frightening” increase in antibiotic-resistant bacteria such as staphylococcus aureus bacteria, also know as MRSA . There are warnings that new strains of antibiotic-resistant bugs will spread quickly through international air travel and internation food sourcing.
“We have a lot of data from Chinese hospitals and it shows a very frightening picture of high-level antibiotic resistance,” said Dr Andreas Heddini of the Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease Control.
“Doctors are daily finding there is nothing they can do, even third and fourth-line antibiotics are not working.
“There is a real risk that globally we will return to a pre-antibiotic era of medicine, where we face a situation where a number of medical treatment options would no longer be there. What happens in China matters for the rest of the world.”
Particular alarm has been raised by resistance rates of MRSA in Chinese hospitals, which has more than doubled from 30 per cent to 70 per cent, according to Professor Xiao Yonghong of the Institute of Clinical Pharmacology at Beijing University.
Last year researchers found a new strain of MRSA in Chinese pigs imported into Hong Kong and called for urgent new studies into its potential to infect humans after an infection of the new strain was confirmed in Guangzhou, where many of the pigs were farmed.
A Beijing-based health expert with access to unpublished surveys showed that the situation in China was actually worse earlier studies had indicated.
“The Chinese Ministry of Health has all the data,” the expert warned, “but they seem unable or unwilling to believe it. The situation has global implications and is highly disturbing.”
The Chinese Ministry of Health failed to respond to requests for an interview or information by phone, email and fax over a three-day period.
New prescription guidelines to restrict antibiotic use being issued by the Chinese Ministry of Health in 2004.
“The guidelines are not being followed effectively,” added Professor Xiao, “over just the last five years, for example, our studies show the rate antibiotic-resistant E.coli has quadrupled from 10 per cent to 40 per cent.”
Public health experts say the rampant over-use of antibiotics in China is primarily caused by China’s under-funded healthcare system where hospitals derive up to half of their operating income from selling drugs. In some cities, such as Chongqing, almost half of all drugs sold are antibiotics.
“In Chinese hospitals our data shows that 60 per cent of in-patients are being prescribed antibiotics compared with the WHO guideline of 30 per cent,” added Professor Xiao who also heads China’s National Antibiotic Resistance Investigation Network.
China’s State Food and Drug Administration bans the sale of antibiotics without prescription but a survey by the The Daily Telegraph found the drugs were still easily obtainable over-the-counter.
Three out of five chemists agreed to sell antibiotics after a cursory consultation with the ‘patient’ who complained of a sore throat.
At one outlet a pharmacist handed over a course of the second-generation antibiotic, Cefuroxime Axetil, with minimal hesitation.
Asked if the sale could “get her into trouble” she said that the pharmacy would get a doctor to write the prescription later to cover their sales records. She added that even doctors from the nearby Capital Institute of Pediatrics came to buy antibiotics without prescription.
“When the surveillance is strict, we won’t risk selling antibiotics,” Ms Zhang added. Asked to elaborate, she explained, “For example during the 2008 Olympic Games period, we didn’t sell them”.
Click here for the full report.
Drug-Resistant Bacteria Brought Home from Hospitals
February 8, 2010
Natural News
By David Gutierrez
Patients who carry drug-resistant bacteria home after hospital discharge can transmit the infection to their home caretakers, according to a study conducted by researchers from Bichat-Claude Bernard Hospital, Assistance Publique-Hopitaux de Paris, and published in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine.
Infection by antibiotic-resistant “superbugs” such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a growing public health threat. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 3.5 million people become infected with MRSA in the United States each year, leading to 90,000 deaths. In particular, “community-acquired” MRSA infections — those acquired outside of health-care settings — are of increasing concern to public health officials.
“In the last decade, community-acquired MRSA strains have caused hospital outbreaks and sometimes replaced older strains previously responsible for hospital-acquired MRSA infections,” the researchers wrote. “Conversely, hospital-acquired MRSA strains can spread outside the healthcare system.”
The study was conducted on 1,501 patients who were discharged from French hospitals into home care between February 2003 and March 2004.
“Patients with major health problems are increasingly discharged to home health care, which creates new opportunities for the transmission of hospital-acquired MRSA,” researcher Jean-Christophe Lucet said.
The researchers found that 191 of the discharged patients, or 12.7 percent, were infected with MRSA. While just over half of these patients were able to eliminate their MRSA infections within one year of infection, 19.1 percent of the patients’ household contacts also became infected.
None of the infected household contacts developed symptoms of infection, meaning the bacteria were living only in the nose or skin — where they could be re-transmitted to someone else.
Older patients were more likely to bring MRSA home from the hospital, and elderly contacts were also most likely to acquire the infection. The contacts at highest risk were those providing care to the patients.
“Sharing the same bed or bedroom, in contrast, was not associated with MRSA transmission,” the researchers wrote. “Thus, MRSA may be preferentially transmitted to contacts at high risk for hand contamination during care procedures.”
They recommended that home health-care providers follow the same sanitation and hygiene practices that are recommended for hospitals.
Click here for the full report.
Researchers Find Superbug at Public Beaches
January 14, 2010
Natural News
By David Gutierrez
Public beaches may provide a home for and mechanism for the spread of the superbug methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), according to a study conducted by researchers from the University of Washington and presented to the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.
“Our results suggest that public beaches may be a reservoir for possible transmission of MRSA,” lead researcher Marilyn Roberts said.
MRSA is a drug-resistant form to the common Staph infection that can lead to severe and even lethal side effects if left untreated. Once a problem largely confined to hospitals, MRSA has spread beyond health care settings in recent years. This new prevalence, combined with its evolved ability to infect healthier people, has led to a situation where MRSA now kills more people in the United States each year than AIDS.
Researchers tested 10 public beaches on the Puget Sound and identified 13 different varieties of Staph bacteria spread over nine of them. Seven of these varieties were multidrug resistant. Five of the MRSA samples appeared most similar to hospital varieties, suggesting that some form of contamination was responsible for their presence.
People may be infected with Staph bacteria without developing symptoms. These carriers can in turn infect others. Carriers may have been responsible for the two MRSA varieties that did not appear to come from hospitals, but the researchers could not be sure.
Roberts said that the MRSA probably entered the beaches due to environmental contamination.
“Where all of these organisms are coming from and how they’re getting seeded (on the beaches) is not clear,” she said. Two beaches tested in southern California were not contaminated.
Nevertheless, the method of sampling that Roberts and colleagues used is not likely to capture every different Staph variety at a given beach.
“The fact that we found these organisms suggests that the amount is much higher than we previously thought,” she said.
Click here for the full report
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.
MRSA Superbug has 50% Mortality Rate in Hospital Patients
November 30, 2009
Natural News
By E. Huff
A recent Henry Ford Hospital study revealed that a new strain of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), the deadly bacterial “superbug” that becomes resistant to many antibiotics, is five times more deadly than other previously-seen strains. Fifty percent of patients who become infected with the new virulent strain die within 30 days; other MRSA strains kill only about 11 percent.
Called USA600, the new strain possesses uniquely noxious characteristics that researchers are linking to the significantly higher mortality rate. Study findings were presented at the 47th annual meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America in Philadelphia.
Typical MRSA strains are problematic because they are resistant to virtually every available antibiotic drug. Most MRSA infections are allegedly treatable with vancomycin, a powerful intravenous drug, but the new USA600 strain has proven itself to be nearly impervious to the drug.
Deadly MRSA strains typically take hold on a person through skin and blood infections, as well as through surgical wounds. While predominantly contracted in health care facilities like hospitals and clinics, the disease is now starting to make the rounds in otherwise healthy people in the outside world.
Experts are associating the increased resistance of deadly MRSA strains to the over-prescription by doctors of antibiotics for all sorts of conditions that do not need them. According to Joel Fuhman, an M.D. from New Jersey, studies show that 90 percent of antibiotics are prescribed for viral diseases, against which they have no effect.
When antibiotics are prescribed needlessly for conditions like a child’s ear infection, which is viral rather than bacterial, they do more harm than good by killing off the child’s beneficial bacteria. As a result, the child’s immune system is weakened making them more susceptible to developing other illnesses and being prescribed more antibiotics.
Europe’s Centre for Disease Control warns that if excessive antibiotic use is not curbed, antibiotics will become all but useless and modern medical procedures like organ transplants and neonatal care for babies will no longer be possible.
Modern medicine must also reawaken to the incredible power of colloidal silver in stopping harmful bacteria, viruses, and fungal infections. Studies show that there is virtually no bacterial strain resistant to silver’s powerful antibacterial effects. When developed properly for therapeutic use, colloidal silver packs a punch unlike any other antibiotic.
Click here for the full report
MRSA Bacteria Popping Up in American Hospitals
November 25, 2009
U.S. News
By Jennifer Thomas
Strains of antibiotic-resistant infections normally found in the community are increasingly showing up among hospital outpatients, raising the risk that inpatients could become infected, new research says.
From 1999 to 2006, researchers found a sevenfold increase in the incidence of outpatients with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections. Outpatients include people treated in emergency departments or surgical centers but not admitted, or at doctors’ offices associated with hospitals.
This poses a risk to inpatients because many resources are used by both sets of patients. These include surgical centers and the doctors themselves, who often treat patients both inside and outside of hospitals.
“What this is suggesting is that outpatients are a significant source of MRSA, especially community-associated MRSA strains,” said the study’s lead author, Eili Klein, a doctoral candidate at Princeton University and a researcher at Resources for the Future, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. “This suggests the need for incentives to make sure hospitals are not only taking steps to prevent hospital-associated strains from spreading among inpatients, but preventing the spread of community-associated strains through shared resources.”
The study is published in the December issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases.
MRSA, which burst into the public consciousness in the 1990s, is named for its resistance to methicillin and other antibiotics. There are several strains, including those that emerged in hospitals, called “hospital associated,” and those that emerged outside hospitals and tend to spread in schools and gyms, called “community associated.”
While both types can cause serious, life-threatening illness, hospital-acquired strains are generally more virulent. The bacteria can get into wounds, causing deadly blood or lung infections. About 20,000 people in the United States die each year from the MRSA infections, according to background information in the study.
Community-associated strains have also caused some deaths in otherwise healthy people, including several children who were killed by MRSA infections in the late 1990s. Typically, however, community-associated strains cause skin or other soft tissue infections that are treatable with newer antibiotics.
Drug-Resistant Bacteria on Rise in US
November 24, 2009
Reuters
by Cynthia Osterman
Cases of a drug-resistant bacterial infection known as MRSA have risen by 90 percent since 1999, and they are increasingly being acquired outside hospitals, researchers reported on Tuesday.
They found two new strains of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus — MRSA for short — were circulating in patients and they are different from the strains normally seen in hospitals.
Ramanan Laxminarayan of Princeton University in New Jersey and colleagues studied data on lab tests from a national network of 300 microbiology laboratories in the United States for their study.
“We found during 1999-2006 that the percentage of S. aureus infections resistant to methicillin increased more than 90 percent, or 10 percent a year, in outpatients admitted to U.S. hospitals,” they wrote in a report published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.
“This increase was caused almost entirely by community-acquired MRSA strains, which increased more than 33 percent annually.”
MRSA is now entrenched in U.S. hospitals. It was also known to be circulating in the community but it was not clear whether patients were carrying the infections out of hospitals, or the other way around.
Laxminarayan’s team found that many more people were being diagnosed with the community-acquired strains, and these strains were not replacing the known hospital strains. Instead, they are just adding to the overall number of MRSA cases.
“Our findings have implications for local and national policies aimed at containing and preventing MRSA,” they wrote.
For one thing, new, fast tests are needed so patients can be diagnosed and treated quickly. It is possible to treat MRSA but doctors need to know straight away so they start patients on the correct antibiotics.
click here for full report
UK Hospitals Turning to Ancient Natural Remedies to Beat Superbugs
November 12, 2009
NaturalNews
by David Gutierrez, staff writer
Faced with a growing prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, hospitals in the United Kingdom are adopting traditional medicinal techniques to fight infection, such as maggots and honey.
Methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and other drug-resistant infections kill or hasten the death of 8,000 British patients per year, while MRSA now kills more people in the United States annually than AIDS.
At the Royal United Hospital in Bath, England, many wounds are now being disinfected with Manuka honey rather than pharmaceutical antibiotics.
“Honey has been used in healing for centuries, but now new products have overcome the problems associated with using conventional honey and bring it into a modern healthcare setting,” said the hospital’s Kate Purser.
Honey is one of the oldest forms of medicine known, and was employed both as food and antibiotic by the ancient Egyptians and, more recently, by German doctors during World War I. Its high sugar content means that the water in honey is almost chemically inert, making it unavailable for the growth of bacteria, fungi or viruses. A naturally occurring enzyme known as glucose oxidase also makes honey acidic enough to create a hostile environment for most bacteria.
The honey used by Royal United Hospital is not the same as the honey found on supermarket shelves, however. The honey is a variety known as Manuka honey, which is produced from the manuka plant, native to New Zealand. This honey is then irradiated to kill any trace bacterial spores.
According to Manuka honey products company Honeymark, the honey has proven effective at killing MRSA in scientific trials. While honey already contains a variety of chemicals that can be beneficial to the body — such as the antioxidant pinocembrin, which only occurs in honey — Honeymark claims that Manuka honey contains even more of these beneficial compounds, which are derived from the manuka flower.
“These medicinal compounds, in most cases, outperform many pharmaceuticals and traditional forms of medicine,” the company said in a press release.
Honeymark claims that Manuka honey can be use both topically and internally to treat conditions caused by bacteria, viruses or fungi, including infected wounds, acne, eczema, stomach ulcers or other gastrointestinal conditions, ringworm and upper respiratory infections. No side effects have been reported, and in contrast to pharmaceutical antibiotics, bacteria appear unable to develop resistance to Manuka honey.
Manuka has a further benefit over pharmaceuticals, according to Honeymark.
“Antibiotics are indiscriminate killers. When taken orally, antibiotics kill all bacteria, both good and bad,” the company said. “For reasons that are currently unknown, Manuka Honey does not effect good bacteria in the body and only destroys harmful, infectious bacteria. This is something that pharmaceuticals have not been able to accomplish.”
Dorothy Yeo of Bath said that honey dressings led to drastic improvement in her ulcer. “I felt I wasn’t getting anywhere and the pain made it hard to sleep,” she said. “But now I’m able to sleep without tablets, and new skin is forming over my ulcer. I’m very pleased and I’d recommend it to anyone.”
While honey can kill the bacteria that cause infection, sometimes other measures are required to remove the dead tissue left by infection or injury. At Royal United Hospital, one such technique is the application of sterilized greenbottle fly larvae, more commonly known as maggots.
Swine Flu Could Combine With Hospital Superbugs to Kill Thousands
August 17, 2009
Natural News
By David Gutierrez
The combination of H1N1 swine flu and antibiotic-resistant staph bacteria could lead to a deadly form of pneumonia that kills half the people it infects within three days, according to a study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
Researchers analyzed two patients who had experienced bacterial pneumonia that led to blood poisoning, concluding that the culprit was community acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA), the form of MRSA that occurs outside of health care settings like hospitals and nursing homes.
“The threat from CA-MRSA in the USA is very serious concern, especially if there is a flu epidemic as this could trigger a large number of cases of necrotizing pneumonia, which has a mortality rate of more than 50 percent in 72 hours,” said Richard James, of the University of Nottingham.
MRSA is already a highly lethal bacteria, because its resistance to first-line antibiotics makes it more likely to cause complications such as blood or organ infections, boils or even skin necrosis. The bacteria kills more people each year in the United States than AIDS.
CA-MRSA cases are sharply on the rise, with more and more cases being reported in settings gyms, schools and prisons.
“The concern is that this may be the start of an exponential increase as we saw with hospital MRSA infections in the 1990s,” James said. “It took the UK 13 years to get to grips with hospital-acquired MRSA infections; we are not equipped to deal with large numbers of CA-MRSA infections in the community.”
CA-MRSA appears to be particularly likely to cause pneumonia when it infects people who are recovering from a flu infection.
“Bacterial pneumonia following influenza can be very serious and in some cases fatal,” said MRSA expert Mark Enright, of Imperial College London. “CA-MRSA pneumonia is particularly dangerous due to the rapid, aggressive nature of the infection and the difficulty in providing effective chemotherapy. The emergence of pandemic influenza and increased prevalence of CA-MRSA in many countries may cause increased morbidity and mortality in infected individuals.”
Click here for the full report from Natural News
