MRSA

[Patf]

I thought I would start a new thread on this, as it was mentioned in the "hospitals" discussion.

I found out a bit about it lately as SA was found to be the bug causing some symptoms I had. It was successfully treated.

The letters MRSA do not mean an exact disease, but describe a bacterium, standing for methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, methicillin being a group of antibiotics. SA is sensitive to other antibiotics.

Evidently one in three of us is a host to this bacterium. The resistance is thought to be due to over-prescription of antibiotics.

It's worth researching on Google, and I'd welcome comment from others who have knowledge or experience of this, as I'm not a biochemist. Pat.

[giantpanda]

Hi!

Not quite clear , where you are heading for.

It belongs to the class called "infections nosocomiales", which you can catch by just frequenting a hospital.

In France they are trying to reduced these, by better hygiene regulations ( not only, more wahsing of hands of the staff).

Otherwise there are a lot of references, but this is really specialists matter.

http://www.google.fr/search?source=ig&hl=fr&rlz=&=&q=MRSA&btnG=Recherche+Google&meta=

Yours,

giantpanda

[Will]

There is much more available information on the so-called 'superbugs' for NHS hospitals than those in virtually any other country, but that does not mean they cannot, or do not, occur elsewhere, including France.

These pages (not the most reliable source in itself, admittedly, but they all link to authoritative sources) provide a wealth of background information.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clostridium_difficile , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staphylococcus_aureus , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methicillin-resistant_Staphylococcus_aureus

I include the c-diff reference because that is often too, erroneously, lumped in with MRSA, and some of the hygiene regimes that are supposed to prevent infection are ineffective against it - and, some say, can actually promote the growth of the bacteria.

 

[Patf]

Thanks to both for information etc.

The reason I posted this was that I had a shock when I saw the lab's report, (you get a copy of it in France) that  I had hundreds of thousands of SA bacteria. I thought I must have an untreatable serious infection. MRSA is given such terrible press.

But the antibiotics worked, I asked for a followup test and the result was clear.

So the point I tried to make was that the bacterium MRSA is very common, both in and out of hospitals. And is susceptible to many antibiotics.

 

 

 

[suzy]

To get more reliable and evidence based information go to www.library.nhs.uk and do your searching there

Sue