Deadly Superbugs (page 2 of 5)

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CA-MRSA: An Epidemic

"Over the past three to four years, CA-MRSA has become an epidemic that's sweeping the country," says Robert Daum, MD, an infectious-disease specialist at the University of Chicago Comer Children's Hospital, who was one of the first researchers to discover and study community strains. (There are more than a hundred of them.) "This isn't something unleashed in hospitals. Community strains are genetically distinct from hospital staph, and even more virulent." Unlike the hospital bug, they produce toxins that kill white blood cells -- the body's main infection fighters, says Dr. Daum. "That makes them a double threat. It's not just a question of giving the right antibiotics. We're seeing aggressive, rapidly progressing cases. A child can be healthy and playing with his toys in the morning, and dead from this infection that night."

MRSA is so widespread that 2.3 million Americans carry the bacteria in their noses without symptoms, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in 2006. CA-MRSA carriers can infect others, or suddenly become ill themselves if the bacteria burrow past the body's defenses. Any break in the skin's protective barrier -- a razor nick, a scratch, even nose picking (which may injure nasal passages) -- can set the stage for a staph infection.

Getting the flu can also allow the bug to jump from the nose to the lungs, says Blaise Congeni, MD, director of infectious diseases at Akron Children's Hospital in Ohio. "During the flu season, we frequently see severe CA-MRSA infections," Dr. Congeni says. "Because kids' resistance is down due to the flu, they can't fight off the bacteria, which can sometimes lead to potentially fatal pneumonia."

Months before Drew Griggs got sick, he had developed a skin infection after a scrape during football practice. Experts reviewing his case now think that infection may have been an undiagnosed bout of CA-MRSA, which can sometimes clear up on its own in mild cases. Drew appeared to be battling the flu when staph-induced pneumonia set in.

Labeled a lethal menace in 1999, after four children in North Dakota and Minnesota died of it, the superbug is now responsible for 59 percent of skin and soft-tissue infections seen in emergency rooms, researchers reported last year. "This is an astonishingly high case rate," says Henry Chambers, MD, chief of infectious diseases at San Francisco General Hospital. He and other experts advocate increased government funding for the development of new antibiotics or, better still, a vaccine. "People are bent out of shape about bird flu, but CA-MRSA is already here and, in my opinion, ranks second only to HIV as a public health threat," Dr. Chambers says. "The drugs we've relied on to treat common infections no longer work. And if we're not smart about using the few weapons we have left, this superbug will definitely morph again, to become resistant to even more antibiotics."

Doctors are already finding the bacteria hard to defeat. CA-MRSA infection has a nasty habit of recurring, adds Dr. Congeni. "Just this week, a patient came in with his seventh episode. People are scared and frustrated because they can't get it out of their homes. Sometimes one family member will get it, then another."

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