Antibiotic-resistant superbug causes deadly skin boils

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

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From: Einar Stefferud <Stef () thor nma com>
Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 00:00:54 -0800
To: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Subject: Antibiotic-resistant superbug causes deadly skin boils

San Mateo County Times - Thursday, February 06, 2003

Antibiotic-resistant superbug causes deadly skin boils
By Suzanne Bohan 

    Reports of mystery infection prompts S.F. watch on gay men


A bacterial infection that overpowers most antibiotics has escaped the
confines of hospitals and is showing up in alarming numbers among the
general public in California, according to health officials.

Scattered clusters of the infection have been reported throughout the
nation. 

While no cases have yet been reported outside hospitals in Alameda County, a
rise in the infections --particularly among gay men-- in San Francisco
prompted the city's public health department to launch a surveillance
program this week, said Edwin Charlebois, an infectious disease
epidemiologist with the University of California, San Francisco.

The pathogen causes painful skin boils and abscesses, and can lead to
potentially fatal blood infections and heart damage. The bug is spread
through casual contact, although it's not as easily acquired as highly
infectious conditions like the common cold or influenza, said Dr. Sam
Stebbins, the deputy health officer for San Mateo County's public health
department. 

Scattered cases of the infection that weren't contracted in the hospital
have been reported during the past few years in San Mateo County, he said,
and there was an outbreak among members of a wrestling team. Stebbins said
county health workers have been saving samples of the bacteria from those
infected to compare with samples from other regions to analyze how the bug
is spreading. 

Called methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, the virulent
bacterium now only responds to two antibiotics "of last resort." It's long
been a menace in hospitals, where the packed conditions dramatically
increase the risk of patients developing a bacterial infection.
Staphylococcus aureus is one of the most common hospital-acquired
infections. 

What's new is that infections from the drug-resistant superbug are showing
up in adults who have never stayed in a hospital or haven't done so
recently. 

"That's the major change, and the worry," Charlebois said. "In the first
patient that I knew about here in San Francisco, when we looked at his MRSA,
it didn't look like the normal MRSA. It was highly resistant (to
antibiotics)." 

In the Bay Area, doctors have been seeing more cases in their general
practices, said Dr. David Witt, an infectious disease specialist at Kaiser
Permanente's South San Francisco medical center.

"Infectious disease people have seen that occasionally this is showing up in
your normal practice," he said. Witt said he had two children develop the
infection in the past year.

In Los Angeles, 932 cases of "community-acquired" MRSA have been reported,
and 69 of those people required hospitalization as a result, Charlebois
said. 

The majority of these cases are among jail inmates, but clusters of cases
have been reported among gay men in San Francisco and Los Angeles. The exact
number is unknown, as the disease isn't reported to health officials,
although San Francisco health officials hope to get a handle on the size of
the outbreak through their new surveillance program, which asks that San
Francisco physicians report any skin conditions that are proving difficult
to treat. 

While the method of the bacteria's spread is under investigation, medical
authorities speculate that gay men could be contracting the infections
through sexual encounters or in shared facilities like gyms and steam rooms.

"It's really rampant," said Dr. Bill Owen, a primary care physician in San
Francisco with a gay and HIV practice. "'We've seen 10 or 15 cases in the
last couple of months," he said.

An L.A. physician said some of the boils and abscesses appeared suddenly,
grew rapidly and were far more virulent than previous staph infections he
had seen. "This is a nasty bug," said Dr. Peter Ruane, whose patients are
also mostly gay men and those infected with HIV. "Some of these infections
take your breath away."

In San Mateo County, health officials added MRSA to the list of diseases
reported to the county by doctors, so the disease has been carefully tracked
in that county, Stebbins said.

These new outbreaks portend the spread of the disease into the rest of the
community, the health experts said.

"That's how epidemics start. They start in small clusters," said Charlebois.

"What we're going to see, at some point, is this is going to spread to a
broader part of the population," Kaiser's Witt said.

Witt emphasized that the current MRSA outbreaks are the price of the
widespread misuse of antibiotics.

"This is just one of the consequences of inappropriate antibiotic use," he
said. Over time, highly adaptive bacteria evolve techniques to outwit
antibiotics, which are initially extremely toxic to the bugs. But the more
frequently the drugs are used, the faster the bacteria evolve strategies to
disarm them. 

For example, in the early 1950s, penicillin was effective against staph
bacteria, but by the late 1950s, it was ineffective.

Only two powerful antibiotics, vancomycin and linezolid, work against MRSA.


The New York Times contributed to this report.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Contact Suzanne Bohan at sbohan () angnewspapers com .

Witt said he opposes using linezolid to treat the infections, as there would
be no other defense against the disease if the bug develops a resistance to
vancomycin, a process that's now occurring.

"That should be our last shot," he said. "It's a good example of the problem
of treating MRSA," Witt added. "There are only two treatments, and one of
them we are loathe to use."

Witt said that misuse of the drugs is rampant, as antibiotics are frequently
incorrectly prescribed to treat colds: Antibiotics have no effect on
viruses, which are the cause of colds.

The best way to prevent an MRSA infection, Witt said, is through improved
hygiene, including frequent hand washing.

©1999-2003 by MediaNews Group, Inc. and ANG Newspapers
http://www.sanmateocountytimes.com/Stories/0,1413,87%257E2425%257E1161882,00
.html?search=filter


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