MRSA

2. And the first went, and poured out his vial upon the earth; and there fell a noisome and grievous sore upon the men which had the mark of the beast, and upon them which worshipped his image.

10. And the fifth angel poured out his vial upon the seat of the beast; and his kingdom was full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues for pain,

11. And blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and repented not of their deeds.

What is MRSA?
Staphylococcus aureus (staph) is a bacterium commonly carried on the skin, in the rectum, or in the nose of healthy people without causing any problems.( carriers of MRSA may never get active outbreaks, but can transmit ) MRSA (Methicillin – resistant Staphylococcus aureus) bacteria have become resistant to commonly used penicillin-related antibiotics.

Who gets MRSA?
MRSA is a common cause of hospital-acquired infections. However, recent reports indicate a nationwide increase in community-acquired MRSA skin infections among bisexual and gay men – in other words acquired outside of hospital settings. While not a sexually transmitted infection, it is believe that a significant number of these cases have been transmitted during sex, and so men who have sex with men should take precautions against getting MRSA.

What are the symptoms associated with MRSA infection?
MRSA infections can cause a broad range of symptoms depending on the part of the body that is infected. It can cause minor infections, like pimples and boils or, occasionally, more serious infections, like pneumonia. Infection often results in redness, swelling and tenderness at the site of infection. Community-acquired infections have mostly been skin infections. A significant number of these infections must be surgically drained, in addition to treatment with antibiotics.

How is MRSA transmitted?
MRSA and other staph infections are almost always transmitted by direct or indirect physical contact and not through the air. Among gay men, we have often seen MRSA transmitted through direct contact during sexual encounters. However, it may also be transmitted through indirect contact – touching objects (e.g., towels, sheets, wound dressings, clothes, benches, sports equipment) contaminated by the infected skin of a person with MRSA. In fact, prior outbreaks of community-acquired MRSA have been seen among professional athletes.

How long can an infected person carry MRSA?
Some people can carry MRSA asymptomatically in their nose or rectum for days to many months, even after their infection has been treated.

How are MRSA infections diagnosed?
MRSA infections are diagnosed when a medial provider obtains a sample from the site of infection and submits it to a laboratory. The laboratory then tests the bacteria using various antibiotics to determine if it is resistant to (able to withstand or tolerate) or sensitive to (able to be killed) select antibiotics.

What is the treatment for MRSA?
Although MRSA cannot be effectively treated with standard antibiotics, it can usually be treated with more powerful ones. Recently, however, a few strains have developed resistance to even these more powerful antibiotics, making it treatment difficult. Newer antibiotics are being developed to address this problem. MRSA infection resulting in abscesses may require drainage.

What about contact with carriers?
If basic hygiene precautions are followed, MRSA carriers are not a hazard to others including their family and friends.

How can the spread of MRSA be controlled?
The best way to prevent staph or MRSA infection is to practice good hygiene. Careful hand washing is the single most effective way to control spread of MRSA.

• Limit your number of sex partners, and carefully wash hands and genitals after sexual activity.
• If you think you have MRSA, avoid any sexual contact and visit your local STI clinic, hospital or medical provider.

If you are a medical provider and would like more information on MRSA from the CDC, click here

Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA), the Superbug, are a sub-group within a cluster of organisms known as Staphylococcus Aureus. MRSA are characterized thus by their resistance to therapy using regularly used antibiotics. This is generally in contrast to the remainder of the Staphylococcus Aureus group, which are referred to as Methicillin-Susceptible Staphylococcus Aureus (MSSA) .

Patients may sometimes pick up the MRSA germ outside hospital, and bring it in to the hospital. Visitors may well, unknowingly, bring the germ into the hospital. In actual fact ALL Staphylococcus Aureus in hospitals and the like, were originally taken in by a Human carrier. We might consider that a brand new hospital would be MRSA free, until contaminated by some outside source. Consider that there are people walking the streets who may well have indirectly been the reason for a patient's death, and they will never know what they have done.

Both MRSA and MSSA can cause infection and illnesses but many individuals can also carry the organism without being infected by it. An individual, who carries the organism, but is not infected, is said to be a ‘carrier’ or being ‘colonized’. At any one time over 30% of healthy individuals carry Staphylococcus Aureus, including MRSA on their bodies. Predominantly in their noses and also in other orifices; Anus, Mouth, places on the body, like the groin, not necessarily in the body. [See Below ]

So when you next pick your nose, and then scrape off a scab, consider that you might be involuntarily introducing a life threatening disease into your blood system.

Since MRSA has Mutated into more resistant "SUPERBUG" more Rigorous Hygiene is required. Wash hands up to your elbows often. LIMIT sexual partners including ORAL SEX! This bacteria is carried by otherwise healthy people, in their mouth, nose, anus. Newer studies show once in the bloodstream, the bacteria may become dormant like the Herpes virus. However still transmitted sexually.

Michael Howard has promised that a new Conservative government will focus on public health, and launch an action programme to tackle a looming epidemic in sexually transmitted diseases.

The Party Leader made the pledge as the Blair administration faced an increasing barrage of criticism for its failings to get a grip of the NHS, and live up to its promises to boost standards in Britain's hospitals and health services.

Already under fire over waiting lists, cancelled operations, and the crisis over the MRSA "superbug", the Labour Government has also been hammered by the Labour-dominated Commons Health Committee which produced "shocking evidence" showing that more than 500 hospital patients a week die from blood clots which could be prevented with inexpensive drugs.

As the Prime Minister and Health Secretary John Reid struggled to defend their record - and a poll revealed that far more people trust the Conservatives to improve the NHS rather than Labour - Mr Howard declared: "In 2002 Mr Blair said that 'if the NHS is not basically fixed by the next election then I'm quite happy to suffer the consequences'. So just consider three facts. Average waiting times have increased. The number of cancelled operations has increased. Rates of the MRSA super bug have doubled - you now have more chance of dying from a superbug you picked up in hospital than being killed on Britain's roads."

He declared: "It's not good enough. People deserve better. I don't believe that the NHS is "basically fixed" - and nor do most other people. The truth is that Mr Blair's Government has spent millions of pounds on the NHS and wasted much of it on bureaucracy. There are now more bureaucrats than GPs in Primary Care Trusts - and for every doctor or nurse recruited, three more bureaucrats are taken on."

Mr Howard promised that an incoming Conservative government would focus on public health - however difficult or sensitive the issue. "Public health is important - it affects every family in our country. That's why we will introduce health checks for people wanting to settle here - so that we don't import life threatening diseases into our country. And we'll take action to tackle sexually transmitted diseases. Mr Blair may not think that sexual health is a national priority - but I do. It's not an issue that can or should be swept under the carpet - it should be tackled directly," Mr Howard said.

Warning that Britain now faces a sexually transmitted diseases epidemic, with Gonorrhea , Chlamydia, and HIV all doubling, he protested: "We have the worst rates of sexual health since records began. And today's sexually transmitted diseases are tomorrow's NHS bills. Chlamydia alone will cost the NHS almost £10 million a year in infertility treatment. And if we don't take action today the problem is only going to get worse."

And Mr Howard told conservatives.com: "It's time for a clear, bold and very public health campaign on diseases like Chlamydia, which can literally ruin women's lives. Young women need to know the risks involved and the precautions they can take - even if that makes some people uncomfortable. And by public I mean television."

Meanwhile, after a rattled Tony Blair launched Labour's so-called health 'mini manifesto', Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley accused him of not listening or confronting the real problems in the NHS.

"We've heard it all before. But doctors and nurses are fed up with Government targets, interference and bureaucracy. They want to see NHS money getting to front line services. They want to treat patients according to clinical judgements not government targets, and they want an NHS focused on the needs and choices of patients, not the dictates of ministers. Labour today are only offering more of the same heavy-handed interference and bureaucracy. Only the Conservatives will offer investment combined with genuine choice for patients, a leading role again for GPs in providing patient care, and freedoms from bureaucracy for NHS staff and institutions."

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)

What is MRSA?
Staphylococci or "staph" are bacteria that live on your skin and in your nose, usually without causing harm. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), is a kind of staph bacteria that has become resistant to antibiotics. Bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics when antibiotics are used frequently.

Staph bacteria are becoming more resistant to penicillin and other antibiotics, commonly used to treat infection.

Staph infections are especially a problem when people have wounds, burns, or tubes in their body for medical treatment.

These infections are, however, becoming more common among people who do not have medical problems, including children. Until recently, people most often got MRSA infections in hospitals and nursing homes. We are now seeing more people with MRSA infections in the community, who have not had any contact with hospitals or other medical facilities.

Superbug strain hits the healthy

19:00 05 March 2003
Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition
Michael Le Page

A drug-resistant superbug that spreads by skin contact is infecting thousands of people across the US and may now have reached Europe.

The MRSA bacterium, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, can be resistant to many antibiotics. It has long been a serious problem in hospitals and nursing homes, where it infects the wounds of patients weakened by disease or injury. But it now appears that a new strain is emerging that spreads through skin contact and can even infect healthy people.

"We are greatly concerned that MRSA has emerged in the community in people with no ties to healthcare," says Scott Fridkin, a medical epidemiologist at the US Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, which has begun investigating the outbreaks.

The strain has been spreading like wildfire in crowded jails but there have also been numerous smaller outbreaks in towns and cities across the US in recent months. Most of those infected are gay men, but the superbug is certainly not restricted to this group. Athletes, schoolchildren and newborns have all fallen victim.

The infections usually appear as sores that resemble insect bites. If not treated properly, nasty abscesses and boils can develop, requiring repeated courses of antibiotics and even surgery. If it reaches the lungs or bloodstream, MRSA can cause pneumonia or septicaemia, which can be deadly. There has also been one report of the superbug spreading via food, causing gastroenteritis.

Jail outbreak

Officials do not have exact numbers of infections because MRSA is not a notifiable disease in the US. But Elizabeth Bancroft of the Los Angeles County Health Department, who is leading the investigation there, says calls to hospitals suggest there have been "scores" of infections among gay men in the city, and that 35 children have been admitted to hospital. Health officials are also battling to contain an outbreak in the county jail that has so far affected almost 1000 inmates, with 66 needing hospital treatment.

Cases of community-acquired MRSA are also emerging in other US cities, including New York, Boston and Miami. The San Francisco Health Department is so concerned it has sent out MRSA alerts to masseurs, gyms and sex-club operators.

"We're monitoring the situation very closely," says Diane Portnoi, the chief investigator at the department. "Most likely there have been some deaths due to these cases. But we don't know for sure because we just don't record MRSA deaths."

The superbug is infecting healthy HIV-negative gay men as well as those infected with the virus. Health officials suspect that the large number of cases among gay men are due to skin-to-skin contact during intercourse, rather than sexual transmission per se, and the fact that many gay men have multiple sexual partners.

But those involved in contact sports are also at risk. In Texas last September, for instance, there were 50 cases among schoolchildren in Pasadena, some on the football team.

Potent toxin

The CDC is still analysing the bacteria responsible for these outbreaks. But Bancroft says initial tests show the same strain is responsible for all the outbreaks in Los Angeles, and that it appears to be the same as a strain first isolated in New York in 1997. It may be more virulent because it has a gene called PVL, which codes for a potent toxin.

Fortunately this strain is still susceptible to several common oral antibiotics. Indeed, the first line of treatment is simply good wound care, Bancroft says.

But the strain may now have spread to Europe. MRSA with the PVL gene has been identified in two HIV-positive gay men in the Netherlands, according to Wim Wannet of the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in Bilthoven, though it has not caused any large outbreaks. He is now trying to get samples from the CDC to see if it is the same as the US strain.

Alternatively, the Dutch superbug may be a similar strain that has evolved locally. The Scottish MRSA Reference Laboratory recently identified two new PVL strains, which have caused small outbreaks in health care workers in Scotland. A similar PVL strain recently caused an outbreak among healthy French teenagers.

Whatever the test results, experts do not doubt the US strain will cross the Atlantic at some point. "It will come to Europe and it will spread," says Giles Edwards, deputy director of the Scottish laboratory.

In the long-term, the fear is that this strain could acquire resistance to more antibiotics, like other MRSA strains, making it more difficult to treat. "It undoubtedly will do," says Edwards.