MRSA in Biological News

Press statement on new CDC MRSA study from SHEA president

A new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows a decrease in catheter-associated bloodstream infections caused by both methicillin-resistant and methicillin-sensitive S. aureus . The 10-year national study, 'Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Central Line-A...

Study finds MRSA in Midwestern swine, workers

The first study documenting methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in swine and swine workers in the United States has been published by University of Iowa researchers. The investigators found a strain of MRSA, known as ST398, in a swine production system in the Midwest, according ...

Queen's scientists find new way to battle MRSA

Experts from Queen's University Belfast have developed new agents to fight MRSA and other hospital-acquired infections that are resistant to antibiotics. The fluids are a class of ionic liquids that not only kill colonies of these dangerous microbes, they also prevent their growth. The developm...

New antibacterials being developed to tackle MRSA superbug

A novel antibacterial medicine that kills the superbug MRSA is being developed under a new scheme launched by the Wellcome Trust. The Seeding Drug Discovery initiative is aimed at catalysing the development of new drugs in areas of unmet need. Prolysis, an R&D company based in Oxford, has re...

Single cell amoeba increases MRSA numbers 1000- fold

Scientists in the UK have found that a type of amoeba acts as an incubator for MRSA bacteria. As amoebae are often found in healthcare environments this discovery has implications for the infection control strategies adopted by hospitals. The single cell amoeba, Acanthamoeba polyphagam commonly e...

Community MRSA is re-emergence of 1950s pandemic, study suggests

An early type of antibiotic-resistant bacteria that caused a global epidemic of infections in the 1950s has re-emerged as one of the community-acquired MRSA 'superbugs', according to a study published in The Lancet tomorrow (Saturday 2 April 2005). This "re-equipping and re-emergence" of a clone ...

Tips from the journals of the American Society for Microbiology

...crobial Peptide May Protect Mice from Lethal Bacterial Infections Including mrsa In a new study researchers from Japan suggest that a synthetic antimicr...ophaga peregrina and found it to be an effective prophylactic treatment of mrsa in infected mice. In this study mice were administered intra-abdominal imp...

New technology shows promise against resistant staph infections

...ling both visually and microscopically. After further refining their nanoparticles, the Einstein team plans to test them in clinical trials against mrsa and other infections. Dr. Friedman is confident that the therapy will be safe for human use. "To date there have been no indication of toxicity in any...

Study finds multidrug-resistant gram-negative bacteria high in long-term care

... wound specimens) obtained from residents at a large, urban long-term care facility, the researchers found 180 cases of MDRGN compared to 104 cases of mrsa and 11 cases of VRE. Of further concern, they say, was the steady rise in MDRGN over the two-year study period, which increased from 7 percent the fir...

Environmental cleaning intervention reduces transmission of multidrug-resistant organisms in ICUs

...n enhanced cleaning protocol reduced the spread of mrsa to patients exposed to rooms in which the prior oc...ifornia at Irvine. "Although the risk of acquiring mrsa and VRE is already low, this study suggests that t...mic medical center in Boston, measured the risk of mrsa and vancomycin-resistant Enterococci (VRE) acquisi...

Seattle Times reporters win ASM public communications award

...role in containing the spread of epidemics such as mrsa infection in hospitals. The award recognizes ou...Philadelphia. The series explored the increase of mrsa in Washington State hospitals as well as official ...e" effected real change in the state's handling of mrsa cases. By day three of the series, Washington Stat...

University researchers to develop coatings that kill superbugs

...ainst common hospital bacterial infections such as mrsa and are safer than existing anti-bacterials based ...h Fellow. So-called "superbug" bacteria such as mrsa are dangerous because they are resistant to most c...against pathogenic bacteria and infections such as mrsa and Pseudomonas aeruginosa." Early work by the ...

Scientists unlock the secrets of C. difficile's protective shell

... C. difficile is naturally resistant to lots of antibiotic treatments, and can recur once contracted. There are now more cases of C. difficile than mrsa in the UK, and in 2007 over 8000 deaths were associated with C. difficile . ...

Blue light destroys antibiotic-resistant staph infection

...that photo-irradiation using 405-nm light destroys mrsa strains grown in culture. In the current study, "B... Vitro," the authors exposed bacterial colonies of mrsa to various doses of 470-nm light, which emits no UV radiation. The two mrsa populations studiedthe US-300 strain of CA-MRSA an...

UT Public Health researchers find link to severe Staph infections

...he United States this strain is the most common CA mrsa isolate and can cause severe skin infections, pneu...and Prevention, the antibiotic-resistant USA300 CA mrsa strain is typically acquired by persons through co... colleagues also tested the virulence of PVL in CA mrsa by using clinical strains of USA300 that did and d...

A novel target for therapeutics against Staph infection

... open-access journal PLoS Pathogens . Once occurring more commonly in healthcare facilities, but now affecting segments of the general population, mrsa is a bacterial pathogen responsible for a range of diseases from mild skin infection to life-threatening sepsis. Even with antibiotics, these infectio...

Phase III data show efficacy/safety of iclaprim in patients with complicated skin infections

...ons to combat resistant infections including MRSA. mrsa affects more than 2 million people in the United S...year and rates of hospital- and community-acquired mrsa are on the rise. , "The high efficacy rates a...fairs Medical Center, Boise, Idaho. "With rates of mrsa increasing and effectiveness of some current antib...

Nanotechnology boosts war on superbugs

...een an alarming growth in antibiotic-resistant hospital 'superbugs' such as mrsa and vancomycin-resistant Enterococci (VRE)," said Dr McKendry. "This is a m... the Health Protection Agency, during 2007 there were around 7,000 cases of mrsa and more than a thousand cases of VRE in England alone. In recent decades t...

Chips are down as Manchester makes protein scanning breakthrough

...ave developed a new and fast method for making biological 'chips' technology that could lead to quick testing for serious diseases, fast detection of mrsa infections and rapid discovery of new drugs. Researchers working at the Manchester Interdisciplinary Biocentre (MIB) and The School of Chemistry ha...

Researchers analyze how new anti-MRSA abtibiotics function

... his research team have long probed the nuances of mrsa as a superbacterium. The Notre Dame team invest...spectrum antibiotics, but their activities against mrsa and multi-drug-resistant mrsa have been especially noteworthy. Although curren...

Turning on cell-cell communication wipes out staph biofilms

...eam has not tested their dispersal methods on MSRA, Horswill notes that the mrsa stains are quite similar to the lab strains he and Boles tested and have qu...that are even more active than those of the lab strains. This suggests that mrsa might be particularly sensitive to approaches that manipulate quorum sensin...

American Society for Microbiology 108th General Meeting

...g the topics to be presented are: The effects of climate change on human health New developments in MRSA: Nasal carriage in healthy people and mrsa pneumonia The role of normal human flora (native bacteria) on human disease: Has modern medicine ignored them? Bats as a source of many emerging d...

MRSA in hospital intensive care -- what's growing where?

... units to develop a novel sampling regime that would indicate the threat of mrsa and other superbugs in the environment, scientists heard today (Monday 31 M...and patients screened over the last 12 months, show extremely low levels of mrsa (methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus), known drug resistant bacteri...

If you don't want to fall ill this Christmas, then share a festive kiss but don't shake hands

...t being aware of it, or forget to wash our hands before preparing food, then stomach germs can also be passed on via this route. Some of us also carry mrsa or C.difficile without even knowing, which can be passed around via hand and other surfaces to family members or, if they are vulnerable to infection,...

Best treatment identified to reduce deadly Staph infections

...on types of non-hospital or community associated mrsa bacteria better than other compounds. Clinical stu...armacy at Oregon State University. The surge in mrsa infections which have been called a superbug and ...h the significant increase in community-associated mrsa infections in recent years, we wanted to find out ...

Developing kryptonite for Superbug

...tually, it is hoped that even the hard-to-identify mrsa bacteria will be detected quickly using some itera... to Americans than the AIDS virus. The spiking mrsa death toll recently reported by the Center for Dis...sociated with the more virulent strains, including mrsa strains. Theres quite a bit known about the toxins...

Tips from the Journals of the American Society for Microbiology

... Phage Therapy May Control Staph Infections in Humans Including mrsa Researchers from Italy have identified a bacteriophage active against Staphylococcus aureus, including methicillin-resistant strains, in mice and ...

Maggots rid patients of MRSA

...hers are ridding diabetic patients of the superbug mrsa - by treating their foot ulcers with maggots. Pr... patients whose foot ulcers were contaminated with mrsa and found all but one were cured within a mean per... time the potential of larval therapy to eliminate mrsa infection of diabetic foot ulcers. If confirmed in...

Drug-resistant bacterial infections serious complication after corrective eye surgery

...erican Journal of Ophthalmology, researchers found mrsa infections in the eyes of 12 patients after refractive surgery. These are the first cases of mrsa infectious keratitis following refractive surgery, the first reports of mrsa keratitis after refractive surgery in patients wit...

New approach could lower antibiotic requirements by 50 times

... had slowly created a host of infections that are resistant to antibiotics. mrsa (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) for example is rapidly spread...g through hospitals, affecting more than 8,000 people in the UK every year. mrsa infection can lead to septic shock and death. ...

MRSA toxin acquitted: Study clears suspected key to severe bacterial illness

...h more severe than traditional hospital-associated mrsa infections, where PVL is less common. These life-t... Scientists had recognized a connection between mrsa strains that contain PVL and the increased occurre...cause some infectious disease physicians who treat mrsa patients had begun questioning whether PVL truly l...

Study shows antibiotic-resistant bacteria responsible for increase in muscle infections

...sistant to these drugs, called methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) appeared in hospitalized patients. Recently, however, newer forms of mrsa began to strike healthy people who have not been recently hospitalized or undergone invasive medical procedures. These community-acquired strains appe...

Transmission of antibiotic-resistant bacteria linked to previous intensive care unit room occupants

...very week they stayed to determine the presence of mrsa and VRE. Upon entering the ICU, 809 patients carried mrsa and 658 carried VRE, leaving 7,629 to screen for the acquisition of mrsa and 7,806 for acquisition of VRE. The average pat...

Funding to tackle hospital superbugs

... A novel approach to treating infectious diseases is being developed by researchers at Cardiff University. Superbugs such as mrsa (Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus) are resistant to one of more conventional antibiotic and require new therapies to aid the treatment of i...

Resistant bacteria increasing source of muscle infection

...ildren's Hospital had started to see a case of the mrsa muscle infection every month. In the cases she stu...y." Houston, in particular, has a high rate of mrsa infections. More than 75 percent of community-acqu...nfections treated at Texas Children's Hospital are mrsa (resistant to the antibiotics commonly used to tre...

Honey helps problem wounds

...id to multi-resistant germs such as MRSA. In this respect medihoney is neck and neck in the race to beat the antibiotic mupirocin, currently the local mrsa antibiotic of choice. This is shown by a study recently published by researchers in Australia. In one point medihoney was even superior to its rival: ...

Study indicates dramatic rise in antibiotic-resistant community-acquired staph infections

...mber of populations at risk for community-acquired mrsa infections is steadily expanding", making it a "re...roups (i.e, beta-lactam antibiotics). Previously, mrsa infections were usually restricted to hospital or ..., "We have seen an explosion of community-acquired mrsa infections among the urban patient populations ser...

Drug-resistant bacteria patterns in intensive care units changing nationally

...hospital. Skin infections are the most common, but mrsa can also infect the heart, the lungs, and the digestive tract. The emergence of mrsa and other drug-resistant bacteria may be due in pa...enters for Disease Control and Prevention examined mrsa data from more than 1,200 intensive care units (IC...

MRSA use amoeba to spread, new research shows

... The mrsa 'superbug' evades many of the measures introduced ...ntists from the University of Bath have shown that mrsa infects and replicates in a species of amoeba, cal...ce cysts to help them spread, this could mean that mrsa maybe able to be 'blown in the wind' between diffe...

'Good' bacteria could save patients from infection infection by deadlier ones

...rst in Europe) in British public hospitals, especially involving the deadly mrsa (methacillin resistant staphylococcus aureus) bacteria. Despite being arou...ry. Admitting that his ideas may sound absurd to some, the fact is that mrsa has become widespread in hospitals - including in Israel as well as the UK ...