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MRSA research,  education lacking

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2:02 PM Thursday, May 21, 2009

Methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a bacterium responsible for difficult-to-treat infections in humans and other animals, including pets. It is a strain that is resistant to a large group of antibiotics and it is becoming more prevalent in health care settings.

A study led by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and published in the Oct. 17, 2007 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association estimated that MRSA would have been responsible for 94,360 serious infections and associated with 18,650 hospital stay-related deaths in the United States in 2005.

These figures suggest that MRSA infections are responsible for more deaths in the U.S. each year than AIDS.

MRSA cases are also an emerging cause of community-associated infection, especially skin and soft tissue infections and necrotizing pneumonia. According to the CDC data, the proportion of infections that are antimicrobial resistant has been growing.

Fifteen percent of reported infections were community-associated, where infection occurred in people without documented contact with health-care settings. This figure does not take into account the unreported cases.

These figures are estimates for a number of reasons. One reason is that doctors are not treating patients with skin wounds in a consistent manner; some do cultures and some do not. Also, many states, including Ohio, are not required to report MRSA.

People infected with antibiotic-resistant organisms like MRSA are more likely to have longer and more expensive hospital stays, and they may be more likely to die as a result of the infection.

When the drug of choice for treating their infections doesn’t work, they require treatment with second- or third-choice medicines that may be less effective, more toxic and more expensive. So, this means that if you or I get a MRSA infection, we may suffer more, and we may pay more.

I encourage readers to contact their state and federal legislators to request more MRSA research and education, and legislation requiring that MRSA be made a reportable disease.

— Caryl J. Carver

Centerville

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