Infection Watch

Bacteria race ahead of drugs

Link: Bacteria race ahead of drugs / Falling behind: Deadly infections increasingly able to beat antibiotics.

Last week, doctors at San Francisco General Hospital reported that a variant of that strain, resistant to six important antibiotics normally used to treat staph, may be transmitted by sexual contact and is spreading among gay men in San Francisco, Boston, New York and Los Angeles.

Yet the problem goes far beyond one bug and a handful of drugs. Entire classes of mainstay antibiotics are being threatened with obsolescence, and bugs far more dangerous than staph are evolving in ominous ways.

"We are on the verge of losing control of the situation, particularly in the hospitals," said Dr. Chip Chambers, chief of infectious disease at San Francisco General Hospital.

The reasons for increasing drug resistance are well known:

- Overuse of antibiotics, which speeds the natural evolution of bacteria, promoting new mutant strains resistant to those drugs.

- Careless prescribing of antibiotics that aren't effective for the malady in question, such as a viral infection.

- Patient demand for antibiotics when they aren't needed.

Heavy use of antibiotics in poultry and livestock feed, which can breed resistance to similar drugs for people.

Germ strains that interbreed at hospitals, where infection controls as simple as hand-washing are lax.

All this is happening while the supply of new antibiotics from drug company laboratories is running dry.

Hospital where new mothers died of identical infection 'must face independent investigation'

Link: Hospital where new mothers died of identical infection 'must face independent investigation' | the Daily Mail.

Campaigners last night called for an independent investigation into the deaths of two mothers who died after giving birth on the same day at the same hospital.

Amy Kimmance, 39, and Jasmine Pickett, 29, had their babies at the Royal Hampshire County Hospital in Winchester on December 21.

But within 72 hours the women, both teachers, had died from complications linked to streptococcus A infection, which normally causes sore throats.

Hospitals tackle vomiting virus

Link: Hospitals tackle vomiting virus - Yahoo! News UK.

People visiting hospitals in the UK are being told to wash their hands with soap and water to halt a sickness and diarrhoea outbreak which has already closed around 100 wards to new patients. (Advertisement)

NHS bosses said at least 98 wards in 44 UK hospitals have stopped admitting new patients and urged anyone who has been ill not to visit friends or relatives until they have been free from symptoms for at least two days.

The use of alcohol gels to kill other germs has been promoted in hospitals but health bosses have warned that it will not kill the norovirus.

"The gel helps with things like MRSA - norovirus needs soap and water," said Lisa Dunn, a hospital director at the Heart of England NHS Trust in Birmingham.

"People want to use the gel and we are having to explain to them that they need to physically wash their hands, not just use the gel."

Poor Americans In The United States Suffer Hidden Burden Of Parasitic And Other Neglected Diseases

The situation mentioned below is also relevant to MRSA - large numbers of those who die are old or poor

Link: Poor Americans In The United States Suffer Hidden Burden Of Parasitic And Other Neglected Diseases.

Large numbers of the poorest Americans living in the United States are suffering from some of the same parasitic infections that affect the poor in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, says the Editor-in-Chief of PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases.

In an article entitled "Poverty and Neglected Diseases in the 'Other' America," Professor Peter Hotez (George Washington University and the Sabin Vaccine Institute) says that there is evidence that the parasitic diseases toxocariasis, cysticercosis and toxoplasmosis as well as other neglected infections are very common in the United States, especially among poor and underrepresented minority populations living in inner cities and poor rural areas. Such infections are known as neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) because they afflict mostly poor people and are often ignored by public health officials and political leaders despite their enormous medical importance.

Toxocariasis, caused by the roundworm Toxocara canis, is now a common parasitic infection among inner city African-American and Hispanic children. Possibly as many as 23% of Americans living in poverty are exposed to this parasitic worm, in whom it causes a lung disease that resembles asthma, as well as liver and brain disease. Cysticercosis, caused by the tapeworm Taenia solium, is emerging as the leading cause of epilepsy among Hispanic populations in the US, and toxoplasmosis is an important cause of congenital birth defects among Mexican Americans and African Americans.