MRSA (Mersa, Staph) Questions

We Are Facing A Global Pandemic Of Antibiotic Resistance, Warn Experts

Link: We Are Facing A Global Pandemic Of Antibiotic Resistance, Warn Experts.

Vital components of modern medicine such as major surgery, organ transplantation, and cancer chemotherapy will be threatened if antibiotic resistance is not tackled urgently, warn experts on bmj.com today. A concerted global response is needed to address rising rates of bacterial resistance caused by the use and abuse of antibiotics or "we will return to the pre-antibiotic era", write Professor Otto Cars and colleagues in an editorial. All antibiotic use "uses up" some of the effectiveness of that antibiotic, diminishing the ability to use it in the future, write the authors, and antibiotics can no longer be considered as a renewable source.

Antibiotic Cycling Reduces MRSA Toll

Link: Promising Method For Reducing MRSA Infections In Hospital Intensive Care Units Revealed By University Of Virginia Study.

Doctors at the University of Virginia Health System have significantly reduced MRSA infections among surgical intensive care patients by using antibiotic cycling, a method of rotating drugs at regular intervals. In a study published in the September 3, 2008 issue of Surgical Infections, UVA researchers report that switching between two antibiotics, linezolid and vancomycin, every three months in the surgical ICU decreased the MRSA infection rate from 1.9 to 1.4 patients per 100 admissions. In-hospital mortality from surgical ICU-acquired MRSA infections fell from 3.8 patients per year to none.

'Antibiotics To Cure Sick Apples, Or Sick Children?' Physicians Ask EPA

Link: 'Antibiotics To Cure Sick Apples, Or Sick Children?' Physicians Ask EPA.

A federal decision to permit the State of Michigan to spray the state's apple orchards with gentamicin risks undermining the value of this important antibiotic to treat blood infections in newborns and other serious human infections, according to the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA). The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Wednesday granted the state of Michigan "emergency" permission to use gentamicin to fight a tree disease called fire blight. "At a time when bacteria are becoming increasingly resistant to many of our best antibiotics, it is an extremely bad idea to risk undermining gentamicin's effectiveness for treating human disease by using it to treat a disease in apples," said IDSA President Donald Poretz, MD. Gentamicin is a crucial antibiotic used to treat dangerous gastrointestinal and urinary tract infections, and is particularly valuable for treating blood infections in newborn children. As rates of antibiotic-resistant infections rise across the country, effective drugs like gen

Doctors told to cut back on antibiotics - Yahoo! News UK

Link: Doctors told to cut back on antibiotics - Yahoo! News UK.

Doctors have been told not to prescribe antibiotics for coughs, colds and ear infections. (Advertisement) The drugs cost the NHS £175 million last year and the drive to cut down on their use is designed both to save money and stop the spread of superbugs like MRSA, which have become resistant to most forms of the drug. Figures show that a quarter of people in England and Wales will visit their GP every year because of symptoms of a respiratory tract infection. They account for 60 per cent of all antibiotic prescribing in general practice - a figure health experts are trying to drive down. Over-prescribing of antibiotics has been linked to the development of superbugs, which become resistant to most forms of the drug. Evidence also shows that antibiotics have limited effectiveness in treating most tract infections and complications are rare if antibiotics are withheld.

Humans May Lose Battle with Bacteria, Medicinal Chemist's Research Shows

Link: Humans May Lose Battle with Bacteria, Medicinal Chemist's Research Shows.

These days, with so-called “superbugs” like methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) making news, resistance is becoming a major public health problem. “Resistance that started in a hospital setting quickly spread into the community, and now resistance is essentially all around us,” Mitscher said. “That does not mean to say we’re all going to die in agony in the immediate future. But this is an important phenomenon that needs to be addressed more carefully than we have in the past.” Part of the solution is to use antibiotics sparingly for industrial, agricultural and medical purposes. When an antibiotic is called for to treat an infection the best one should be used with appropriate intensity. Mitscher said that drug corporations must develop antibiotics with the potential not only to kill microbes but also to inhibit their ability to mutate. These new drugs would be made more effective still if they enlisted the body’s own immune system to battle infections. Alas, because of the economics of the drug industry, Mitscher said such “triple treat” antibiotics might be a long time coming. “The pace of antibiotic discovery has fallen off, partly because the intensive research on them has lead to increasingly diminishing returns,” said Mitscher. “Pharmaceutical firms have, for a variety of commercial reasons, de-emphasized antibiotic research in recent decades.”

MRSA Nasal Treatment could break resistance problem

Link: MRSA Is A Slow Moving Hurricane That Cannot Be Averted Says Infection Expert.

For those covering this news and stories on new approaches on eradicating MRSA, NovaBay Pharmaceuticals is making available Dr. Ron Najafi, CEO of NovaBay. Dr. Najafi believes the issue of MRSA is similar to a slow moving hurricane, gathering strength and resistance as it spreads. "Once the 'superbug' hits a community or hospital," asks Dr. Najafi, "are populations ready to deal with it?" That is why Dr. Najafi believes a different approach is necessary in treating the rapidly increasing infectious microbes that have become resistant to our current slate of drugs. Dr. Najafi and the research team at NovaBay are currently working on a compound, NVC-422, which has shown promise combating numerous pathogens including MRSA. NovaBay believes that the colonization of S. aureus takes place primarily in the nose and on the skin. The damp and dark qualities of nasal tissue create an ideal breeding ground for the bacteria to grow and spread. AgaNase™, NovaBay's formulation of NVC-422 for nasal applications, is unique in that it is an anti-infective, though not a conventional antibiotic. Topically applied to the lower nasal passage to eliminate colonization of S. aureus, including MRSA, AgaNase rapidly destroys a range of pathogens that include bacteria, yeast, and viruses. Because AgaNase is a chlorine-based analog of molecules produced by white blood cells, it is believed that bacteria and viruses are unlikely to develop resistance to this treatment.

Scientists identify proteins that help bacteria put up a fight

Link: Scientists identify proteins that help bacteria put up a fight.

Scientists have already observed that the cell membranes of many disease-causing bacteria develop resistance by changing their electrical charge from negative to positive. Many antibiotics work because they carry a positive charge that attracts them to negatively charged bacteria cells. The opposite charges allow antibiotics to penetrate and kill bacteria. But by changing their naturally occurring negative charge to positive, some bacteria cells establish a protective “coat” that repels the antibiotic. A common example of antibiotic resistance is Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), the strain of bacteria responsible for thousands of difficult-to-treat infections reported in humans each year. “There is a dispute that remains unresolved as to whether or not this pathway we’re investigating is involved in MRSA. It’s very unclear. By understanding the mechanism, we might be able to find out if this is involved in MRSA or not,” Ibba said. Ibba and Hervé Roy, a postdoctoral researcher at Ohio State and lead author of the study, concentrated on exploring the activities of these specific MprF proteins, which are just two of dozens of forms of a class of genes associated with the development of resistance in about 200 bacteria species. They investigated the activity of two forms of MprF from the pathogen Clostridium perfringens, one of the most common sources of food poisoning in the United States. MprF proteins affect the membrane’s charge by using an adapter molecule, called transfer RNA (tRNA), to transfer amino acids to the lipids that make up the cell membrane. This action leads to modification of the membrane and the change in its charge.

Antibiotic policies to control hospital-acquired infection

Link: Antibiotic policies to control hospital-acquired infection -- Gould, 10.1093/jac/dkn039 -- Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy.

Antibiotic use is widely accepted as being responsible for the selection and maintenance of antibiotic resistance. It is less obvious, however, that it is also responsible for increasing transmissibility and pathogenicity of many multiresistant bacteria and may actually be increasing the number of hospital-acquired infections (HAIs). Antibiotic stewardship should be given much more emphasis in the fight against HAI.

MRSA: Antibiotic Cycling Strategy will slow down resistance

Link: MRSA: Mathematical Modeling Offers New Approaches To Fight Dual-resistant Hospital Infections.

"Model simulations were used to compare the effects of antimicrobial cycling, in which antibiotic classes are alternated over time, with mixing programs (random allocation of treatment drugs) in a setting where the goal is that of reducing the prevalence of dual resistance," Castillo-Chavez says. "Resistance to multiple drugs cannot be ignored and cycling programs appear more useful in reducing dual resistance than the random mixing regime," he says. "The early diagnosis and isolation of colonized patients with dual-resistant bacteria turns out to be quite effective at maintaining lower levels of dual resistance in hospitals." He notes: "This seems to be the first time that models are used to deal with the evaluation of two distinct methods of reducing the impact of dual resistance in hospitals. Models that focus on reducing the prevalence of pathogens resistant to two types of drugs, excluding the possibility of dual resistance, have been studied in the past. Models were used to show that random allocation treatment regimes might be better than cycling. "Here, we show that cycling may be useful when dealing with dual resistance -- the most worrisome hospital situation," he says.

Antibiotic Key To Controlling MRSA Epidemic Identified

Link: Key To Controlling MRSA Epidemic Identified.

Now, a sophisticated new mathematical model has identified what may be the key to getting this growing health problem under control: Changing the way that antibiotics are prescribed and administered. "We have developed the mathematical model in order to identify the key factors that contribute to this problem and to estimate the effectiveness of different types of preventative measures in typical hospital settings," said Vanderbilt mathematician Glenn F. Webb, who described the results at a presentation at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science on Feb. 17 in Boston. "According to our analysis, the most effective way to combat this growing problem is to minimize the use of antibiotics," he said. "It is no secret that antibiotics are overused in hospitals. How to optimize its administration is a difficult issue. But the excessive use of antibiotics, which may benefit individual patients, is creating a serious problem for the general patient community." For example, the model calculates that in a hospital where antibiotic treatments are begun on average three days after diagnosis and continued for 18 days, the number of cross-infection by resistant bacteria (that is, cases where patients are accidentally infected by health care workers who have been exposed to these bacteria while treating other patients) waxes and wanes but never disappears completely. However, when antibiotic treatments are begun on the day of diagnosis and continued for eight days, the cross-infection rate drops to nearly zero within 250 days.