MRSA, Staph, Staff, Mersa, Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus Symptoms & Treatment

Is our zeal for cleanliness making us ill?

Link: Is our zeal for cleanliness making us ill? - Times Online.

The Hygiene Hypothesis, formulated by the epidemiologist David Strachan about 20 years ago, argued that children's immune systems were not being sufficiently challenged - because of falling family size and increasingly sterile homes - to learn how to fend off diseases. The result was that once harmless invaders, such as cat hair, triggered immune overreactions (this is what constitutes an allergy). In the late Nineties, the evidence for Strachan's hunch was snowballing: kids in daycare showed lower rates of asthma than infants kept at home, suggesting that immunity might be conferred by early contact with other children. But in recent years there has been a backlash against the Hygiene Hypothesis, especially from experts on infectious diseases. They worry be-cause the hygiene hypothesis lulls people into thinking that poor hygiene is OK, or beneficial, when the opposite is true. Poor hygiene allows bad germs to flourish, and the prevalence of gastrointestinal infections and MRSA, along with norovirus, show we should not drop our guard. Professor Sally Bloomfield, an expert on infectious diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, is one who finds the persistence of Strachan's unproven thesis counterproductive. “When we have unacceptable levels of gastrointestinal disease, norovirus - and Sars and a possibile flu pandemic - the idea that hygiene is unnatural is frightening. We need to support cleanliness and hygiene. I still find people who think it's proven that we are too clean. We must dispel this.” How has this error come about? Bloomfield says that while exposure to microbes seemed pivotal in the prevention of allergies, Strachan went farther, suggesting that it was disease-causing microbes (pathogens) that offered protection: “He made the link between exposure to infection and protection from allergy, but it could be benign microbes, rather than disease-causing ones, that are providing protection. It could be that as we've improved water and food, knocked out the benign bacteria along with the pathogens. Or it could be nothing to do with microbes.”

Family fury over potential MRSA cross infection

Link: News

    A FAMILY today claimed hospital staff in Sheffield left them exposed to a potentially deadly superbug - by failing to tell them their sick relative had MRSA. Today mum-of-two Nicola Salkeld told The Star she could be forced to postpone a planned operation next week if tests show she has the MRSA bug on her skin after coming into close contact with her husband's poorly grandfather in hospital. Nicola, aged 34, has waited six months for the op at the Jessop Wing next Thursday. She says she would never have visited John Salkeld, 83, if staff at the Northern General had told her he had contracted the bug. MRSA can cause serious infections or even kill if it enters the body through wounds or tubes after surgery or serious illness.

The Dawn of the Domestic Superbug

Link: RedNova News - Science - The Dawn of the Domestic Superbug

Studies from Japan suggest a strong link between caMRSA and the use of antibacterial cleaning solutions. When investigators there looked at the generational effects of exposure to the common antibacterial agent benzalkonium chloride (used in household cleaners and certain toiletries) in caMRSA strains, they found that as each new generation of bacteria evolved its resistance to the antibacterial grew stronger - as did its resistance to common antibiotics like methicillin and other beta-lactam antibiotics. As resistance grows the minimum amount of antibacterial and antibiotic needed to kill bacteria also grows, in some cases dramatically. In another Japanese study, the concentration of the antibiotic oxacillin necessary to inhibit the growth of third- generation benzalkonium chloride-resistant caMRSA organisms was 32 times greater than first-generation resistant varieties.

OAP Homes shun MRSA carriers

Link: Helsingin Sanomat - International Edition - Home.

The transfer of elderly people suffering from the rapidly spreading antibiotic-resistant MRSA staphylococcus hospital bacteria from hospitals to old people's homes has caused problems.       In hospitals run by the City of Helsinki, there are currently around ten elderly patients who would be fit enough to live in a managed care facility, rather than in a hospital.       However, Jaana Saarenheimo, deputy head physician of the Herttoniemi Hospital, says that they are being kept in the considerably more expensive hospital because of the bacteria. Some have been hospitalised for months, even though symptom-free carriers of the bacteria usually do not need treatment.      A special section for MRSA patients was to have been opened at the Kustaankartano service centre in Helsinki, but the launch has been postponed until later in the spring because of delays in repairs.       "It is quite senseless to keep the old people in hospital. Here on the hospital side we have been constantly waiting for social services to get things into shape", Saarenheimo says.       "It is wrong if even a single elderly person has to suffer from it."       It has been decided in Helsinki that MRSA carriers would be placed only in the city-run service centres of Kustaankartano, Roihuvuori, and Riistaviori, and not in any private facilities. Each one is to get his or her own room and toilet, which complicates the matter.

MRSA - Home can be the problem

Link: HighWire Press -- Medline Abstract.

Healthcare workers (HCWs) in close contact with patients colonized with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) were screened for MRSA acquisition. From 1995 to 2001, MRSA was identified from the nasopharyngeal swabs of 87 HCWs, collected one to two weeks after contact with 592 known MRSA-positive patients. These HCWs were withdrawn from work and treated with topical antibiotics/antiseptics. They were advised to disinfect their bathrooms and personal hygiene articles, and to wash bed linen and pillows. They were screened for successful eradication for up to three months. Seventy-three (84%) HCWs lost their carrier status. The eradication regimen failed in 14 cases. In 11 of these MRSA was detected only in later nasopharyngeal swabs (suspected recolonization). Screening identified nasal colonization of close household contacts in eight of these 11 cases. Environmental sampling detected contamination in seven out of eight screened home environments. When eradication treatment was applied to household contacts and when household surfaces were cleaned and disinfected, the carriage cleared in most cases within a few weeks. However, when home environments are heavily contaminated, despite adequate medical treatment, eradication took upto two years. Due to withdrawal from work, the 14 carriers without prompt and lasting eradication after the first course of treatment accounted for about 70% of all lost working days. These experiences support the hypothesis that control measures should not be restricted to antibiotic or antiseptic treatment of long-term carriers (HCWs as well as patients), but must also include cleaning and disinfection of the household.