Bio Composites Plus publishes MRSA related news articles, technical reports and alerts, to highlight the existing and emerging threats from MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) and Staph (staphylococcus) and HCAI (healthcare-associated infections)
The attached sub-folders are case studies, reported in the media:
SOME OF THE MOST RECENT ALERTS:
HERALD on SUNDAY New Zealand – Sunday 15 March 2009
Sharp increase in cases of MRSA
Cases of the virulent superbug MRSA have increased 3400 per cent over the last four years.
Cases of antibiotic-resistant superbug methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) have exploded in the past five years, figures show.
The Sunday Star Times reported infections had risen from 12 in 2004 to 420 last year (a 3400 percent increase) according to Ministry of Health figures.
Green Party health spokesperson Sue Kedgley said health professionals should have been alerted to the increase.
She said the bug causes serious skin infections and if it is not caught early it can do a lot of tissue damage.
Some patients do not survive.
"This strain of MRSA is contagious, easily misdiagnosed and resistant to many antibiotics," said Ms. Kedgley.
"It is a cause of huge concern overseas, because it is virulent and contagious, and is associated with serious skin infection outbreaks, particularly amongst sports teams."
The infection initially appeared as raised red dots which looked like pimples or boils.
Left untreated they could become pus-filled, golf ball-sized abscesses, which could infect bones and organs and, potentially, lead to death.
Officials have recently become alarmed because one of the two most commonly used anti-virals known by the trade name Tamiflu, has shown little efficacy against this year’s prevailing flu strains. In an apparently increasing number of cases, though, influenza is accompanied by bacterial infections; officials noted a marked increase in such secondary infections during the 2006-07 flu season and have watched numbers rise since. Bacterial infections, if caught in time and properly diagnosed, can often be treated with antibiotics.
But symptoms of bacterial infection are hard for the layperson to distinguish from those of the flu, and by the time they are recognized, it’s often too late for antibiotics. Moreover, many such infections are caused by bacteria such as MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) that have become resistant to most frontline antibiotics. Of the 17 pediatric flu deaths this season, 10 have involved Staphylococcus aureus infection, with four of those 10 involving MRSA.
A local family is speaking out after they say their young son died of the highly contagious infection MRSA. Michael Literski was a 13-year student at the EthanAllenElementary School and a Frankford resident. His family thought he had a bad cold or the flu until he died February 16. “All of a sudden, he just said ‘it’s time’ and blood just started pouring out of his mouth and he was gone in my arms and my son was doing CPR on him,” Michael’s grandmother Mary Ann Gwalthney said.
The family told CBS3 that the medical examiner’s office did an autopsy. “They took a part of the lung and put it in the machinery and found out it was MRSA,” Mary Ann said. “He was a perfectly healthy, normal 13-year-old boy looking to graduate from school, and just wiped out of our arms.” Michael’s dad had MRSA last year.
