Drug-Resistant Super Bug Kills more People than AIDS

By Anastacia Mott Austin

A new study released this week by The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reveals that a so-called "super bug" resistant to first-line antibiotics is on the rise, and killing more people than was previously thought.

The report, issued by the Centers for Disease Control, says that methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, was responsible for the deaths of 19,000 Americans in 2005, the year studied in the report.

"This is a significant public health problem. We should be very worried," said Scott K. Fridkin, an epidemiologist for the CDC, to reporters.

The report comes out just as the public is beginning to be aware of the seriousness of MRSA. This week Virginia high school student Ashton Bonds died of a MRSA infection that had spread throughout his body. As a result, schools throughout the area were closed for cleaning.

Equally alarming as its ability to resist antibiotics is the fact that it is easily communicable. MRSA can live on surfaces such as desktops or tables for weeks, and is usually transmitted through simple skin-to-skin contact. While it is a harmless bacterium on the skin, it becomes deadly when it gains access to the bloodstream, usually through a break in the skin.

Most often found in hospital settings or hospital-like environments like nursing homes, MRSA is beginning to be seen in the larger community, something that greatly alarms health experts.

"These are some of the most dreaded invasive bacterial diseases out there," said Elizabeth Bancroft, a medical epidemiologist from the Los Angeles County Department of Health, who wrote an editorial in JAMA which accompanies the report. "This is clearly a very big deal," Bancroft told reporters.

Especially when considered in light of the fact that MRSA infections seem to have outpaced the rate of deaths caused by AIDS-related illness in this country. Approximately 17,011 people died of AIDs-related complications in 2005, fewer than the number killed by MRSA.

"I've never heard of a bacterial invasive disease with an attack rate anywhere near this high in children and the elderly," said Dr. Robert Daum, an MRSA expert from the University of Chicago, to reporters at The Chicago Tribune.

Hospitals and health care facilities would do well to be more careful about disease prevention strategies, such as frequent hand washing, because the majority of MRSA infections can be traced back to hospitals or hospital-like environments.

Epidemiologist R. Monina Klevens, lead author of the CDC report, said to the press, "This is really a call to action for health-care facilities to make sure they're doing everything they can to prevent MRSA."

According to the figures presented by the report, deadly MSRA infections are more common than pneumonia, meningitis, and flesh-eating bacteria combined.

Experts attribute overuse of common antibiotics as the leading cause of super-bug strains developing.

The study was published alongside another report revealing that a bacterium responsible for a certain number of ear infections has now become completely immune to all antibiotics.

Said Dr. Bancroft to reporters, "It’s really just the tip of the iceberg. It’s astounding…taken together, what these two papers show is that we’re increasingly facing antibiotic-resistant forms of these very common organisms."