Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), an infection that was previously restricted to hospitals, is increasingly affecting the local population, two studies published in the
New England Journal of Medicine has said. The studies, by two teams of medical experts, said that this infection should be paid heed to by doctors, who should try other antibiotics as soon its occurrence is noticed.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Scott Fridkin, lead author of one of the study, said, “The alarm does need to be raised to people and clinicians that if you have a staph infection and it’s not getting better, you’d better go back to your doctor. The bad news is that staph causes a lot of skin infections and they’ve always been difficult to treat.” He added that the community staph infection is ‘biologically different’ and ‘resistant to first-line antibiotics’.
“This should serve as a red flag to doctors whenever they are treating skin infections. This is a new bug that has emerged in the community. It’s a cause for concern,” he said.
The study noted that ‘community-associated MRSA infections are now a common and serious problem’ involving the skin, especially among children, and hospitalization occurs commonly.
Between 2001 and 2002, 1647 cases of community-acquired MRSA infection in the areas of Baltimore, Atlanta and Minnesota were reported, indicating a rate of between 8 and 20 per cent of all MRSA cases. Almost 25 per cent of these patients had to be hospitalized later.
Fridkin expressed surprise at the high rate of community-acquired MSRA. He had expected the rate to be close to nil. “It wasn’t there a decade ago, but it is there now,” he said.
Another study, headed by Loren Miller from Harbor-University of California Los Angeles Medical Center, said that staph was responsible for some cases of flesh-eating bacteria. The study, which spanned more than a year, found 14 examples of staph-induced flesh eating bacteria. Out of the 14 cases, four patients did not exhibit high-risk conditions like hepatitis, diabetes and drug abuse.
According to Fridkin, hygienic habits, mainly regular washing of the hands, might go a long way in preventing staph infection.
