CDC docs says staph infection superbug may be killing more in US than HIV

1. wash our hands more in all environments
2. be very, very careful about when we give ourselves and our kids antibiotics

It is tempting to write that plain-old staph infection MRSA Superbug turn out in the US to be killing more people than AIDS, but this isn’t plain-old staph. In the Journal of the American Medical Association this week is a disturbing report on the spread of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, MRSA. It appears to be as much as twice as common as has been reported — nearly 100,000 infections and almost 19,000 deaths in 2005 (AIDS that year killed about 2005 Americans). An accompanying editorial calls the rate “astounding.”

A second JAMA report, getting less attention, notes discovery of a drug-resistant microbe that causes many children’s ear infections.

Many MRSA reports are brief, but the CDC’s conclusions attract wide media attention. JAMA put the full text of the paper on line free (see Grist below).

In the Chicago Tribune Judith Graham has a local doctor declaring, “I’ve never heard of a bacterial invasive disease with an attack rate anywhere near this high in children and the elderly.” In the Toronto Star Michelle Shephard (with, this morning, an erroneous on line hed confusing cases with deaths) has a Canadian doctor calling it a wake-up call and adding that while exotics like West Nile Virus get publicity, this drug-resistant form of a commonplace bacterium is a leading cause of death.

The LA Times’s Thomas H. Maugh II runs it under a hed that notes the contagion has “migrated” from hospitals, where it first attracted wide medical concern, and is now in the general community. He writes enough on it to include passages on other drug-resistant organisms arising among us, on ways that this super-staph is spread outside hospitals (via prison tattoos for one), and that rates, perhaps due to poverty, are notably higher in blacks than in whites. Kansas City Star’s Alan Bavley, perhaps with something already in the hopper, does the story with an enterprising feature treatment focussing on a local univ. hospital’s experience. - Source: MIT.edu