Information about MRSA that every parent should know!

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/mrsa/DS00735

http://www.webmd.com/news/20071016/more-us-deaths-from-mrsa-than-aids?page=2&print=true

http://www.hcplive.com/mdnglive/features/central-line_MRSA_infections

“MRSA Secrets Revealed” this book is a great resource.

http://www.staph-infection-resources.com/1/mrsa_treatment_bio_dw.html?gclid=CMW2zomlqpkCFQ0hDQod_EsHpQ

CDC Poster

http://www.cdc.gov/NCIDOD/DHQP/pdf/ar/MRSAPatientInfoSheet.pdf

Posted: March 17th, 2009 under MRSA.
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BOSTON — On September 8, Nantucket’s newspaper, The Inquirer and Mirror, reported the number of confirmed cases of Lyme disease had reached 262 for 2008. This represented an increase of almost 40% over all of 2007. In 2006 there were only 23 cases confirmed.

It was only 33 years ago that Lyme disease was recognized as the cause of a mysterious cluster of juvenile arthritis cases in the town of Lyme, Conn. In 1982 the causative agent, a bacteria named Borrelia burgdorferi, was isolated from the mid-gut of deer ticks. Since that time Lyme disease has become the most common vector-borne disease in the U.S. and has vaulted into the top ten of all infectious diseases. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health reports the incidence of Lyme disease as confirmed cases per 100,000 population. In 2005 there were 36.3 reports per 100,000 statewide compared to the national average of 8.2 cases. At the current rate Nantucket will surpass 1,000 cases per 100,000 giving it one of the highest incidences in the world.

According to Massachusetts native Constance Bean, former coordinator of health education at MIT and author of Beating Lyme: Understanding and Treating This Complex and Often Misdiagnosed Disease, the Lyme disease problem on Nantucket is just the tip of the iceberg. “The higher numbers are not due to improved diagnosis, “she tells Infection Protection. “By all estimates only one in ten cases is reported. We don’t have true numbers on the Lyme epidemic because we don’t have reliable tests. It is estimated that 1.7 million Americans are infected. We have more ticks. The ticks have no natural enemies and more of the ticks are being infected.”

Dr. Dan Cameron is an epidemiologist and an expert in Lyme disease. He is board president of the International Lyme and Associated Disease Society. “Yes”, he tells Infection Protection, “Lyme disease is certainly the epidemic of our time”. He agrees that Lyme disease is under-reported and under-treated. “The most effective way to address Lyme disease is to foster greater understanding of the disease within the medical community. Increased incidence of Lyme disease can be attributed to several factors, including the continued spread of human populations into wooded habitats with increased exposure to ticks, global warming that has increased survivability of ticks, and the geographic spread of infested tick populations to all 50 states.”

– by Dr. Chris Iliades, MD,  Boston Correspondent, Infection Protection

Posted: November 29th, 2008 under Developing Diseases, Diseases, Impaired Immunity, Lyme disease.
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A new report by the National Association of Business Economists (NABE) indicates that that economic growth will be less than 0.2 percent this year and 0.7 percent in 2009 for health care and other U.S. businesses.

According to Chris Varvares, president, Macroeconomic Advisers, and also the president of NABE, following a small contraction in the third quarter of this year, the NABE forecasters expect real GDP to decline at a 2.6% rate in the fourth quarter, implying growth of just 0.2% in 2008. That indicates that the poor economy — much touted during the general election campaign by the liberal establishment media – won’t actually be in a technical recession until the end of this year, on December 31. But the U.S. economy is expect to grow, at slow rate, next year.

Is this reason enough to increase collectivism, the government ownership of significant shares of the economy? We think not.

“GDP growth next year is expected to be a meager 0.7%. This would be the slowest growth over a two-year period since the early 1980s. The unemployment rate is forecast to rise to 7.5% by the end of next year. Inflation is expected to moderate, as economic slack builds and as oil prices are forecast to remain relatively contained.”

Other points of note from the economic report:

Posted: November 19th, 2008 under Developing Diseases.
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Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle has accepted President-elect Barack Hussein Obama’s offer to be Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), according to media reports.

The appointment, subject to Senate confirmation, has not been announced, but officials said the job is not set for the South Dakota Democrat.

Daschle was a close adviser on health issues, like international pandemics like SARS and other health policies, to Obama throughout the former Illinois senator’s White House campaign. Recently, he wrote a book on his proposals to improve health care, and he is working with former Senate colleagues on his recommendations to improve the system.

Organizations seeking to create socialized medicine in the U.S. were enthused about the selection.

“Sen. Daschle has a deep commitment to securing high-quality, affordable health care for everyone in our nation,” said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA. “His new leadership position confirms that the incoming Obama administration has made health care reform a top and early priority for action in 2009.”

– by Gene J. Koprowski, Editorial Director, and Nancy Bruening, Executive Editor

For more information, contact: http://familiesusa.org/issues/uninsured/coverage/

 

Daschle lost his Senate seat in 2004 when President Bush won re-election, and the GOP increased its hold on Congress.

Posted: November 19th, 2008 under SARS.
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One of the world’s foremost MRI experts, Dr. Peter Rothschild, is telling the public about the risk of contracting the “Superbug” MRSA during medical imaging studies.

Many patients have developed “Superbug” infections that are resistant to conventional antibiotics after their MRI. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is one of the most common superbugs that patients have contracted after undergoing an MRI scan.

The most famous of these cases is that of 15-year-old student Nile Moss, who died from an MRSA infection after an outpatient visit to a hospital where he underwent an MRI. After leaving the hospital, Nile developed a high temperature.

Just days after being admitted to the hospital, he died.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that 1.7 million people in the United States contract a hospital acquired infection each year, and more than 100,000 people die each year as a result of these infections. Reports show that, in 2005, nearly 19,000 people died from hospital acquired infections. Hospital acquired infections are killing more people each year than AIDS.

– by Gene J. Koprowski, Editorial Director and Nancy Bruening, Executive Editor

Posted: November 18th, 2008 under MRSA.
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A Washington state man who lost his penis to flesh-eating bacteria in prison has negotiated a $300,000 settlement from the Washington Department of Corrections.

The 61-year-old man, Charles Manning, said he settled because he wants the traumatic matter to be over.The department said it settled to save the cost of litigation.Manning was serving time in 2004 for threatening a neighbor.

When he became ill at the Stafford Creek prison near Aberdeen it was diagnosed as a reaction to cold medicine. By the time Manning was airlifted to a Seattle hospital with an internal abscess, physicians had to remove several pounds of flesh from his pelvic region.

Posted: November 18th, 2008 under Flesh-Eating Bacteria.
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An HIV-1 vaccine designed to stimulate cell-mediated immunity is “no better than placebo” in preventing HIV infection in individuals at high risk of contracting the disease, according to a study published this week in The Lancet.

The Lancet is one of the world’s leading medical journals.

Dr. Susan P. Buchbinder, MD, from the San Francisco Department of Public Health, and colleagues randomly assigned 3,000 HIV-negative individuals to three injections of the MRKAd5 HIV-1 vaccine made in adenovirus type 5, Ad5, and designed to elicit cell-mediated immunity, or placebo.

Doctors found that among patients with low Ad5 antibody titers at baseline, 24, or 3 percent, of 741 vaccine recipients and 21, 3 percent, of 762 placebo recipients became infected with HIV-1.

Plasma HIV-1 RNA levels were similar in the placebo and vaccine groups, according to Dr. Buchbinder’s research.

– by Gene J. Koprowski, Editorial Director, and Nancy Bruening, Executive Editor

Image courtesy of 3DScience.com.

Posted: November 14th, 2008 under Developing Diseases, Diseases, HIV, Impaired Immunity.
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The death of a 12-year-old boy from a tooth infection — which spread to his brain – has sparked outrage and forced the state of Maryland to launch a new, public health project.

Family, friends, and even some public health officials gathered yesterday at the school he attended to announce the Deamonte Driver Dental Project, which will bring a mobile dental office to needy children at elementary schools in Prince George’s and Montgomery counties.

The boy died from a tooth infection that spread to his brain in February 2007 after his mother could not find a dentist to treat his infectious illness.

Maryland Office of Oral Health Director Harry Goodman says Driver’s death spurred officials to act.

The project’s director, Dr. Hazell Harper, says the goal is to serve about 2,000 students at nine schools in the first school year.

The state has given Prince George’s County more than $288,000 to fund the first year of the project.

Driver’s mom, Alyce, who has just graduated from the dental assistant program at Prince George’s Community College, did not speak at the ceremony, but she was moved tears.

– by Gene J. Koprowski, Editorial Director, and Nancy Bruening, Executive Editor

Posted: November 14th, 2008 under Developing Diseases, Impaired Immunity, Meningitis.
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A local judge in the Dutch city of Groningen has handed down sentences of nine and five years to the two of the accused men in what has become known as the Groningen HIV case.

The trial of these men centered on charges that they drugged, then raped and deliberately infected other men with HIV - the virus that leads to AIDS - at a number of  outlandish “sex parties” in the Netherlands.

One of the defendants was jailed for nine years, another to five years, while a third man will be released immediately.

The trial began a month ago, and the court ruled there was dispositive evidence of the two main suspects having attempted to cause grievous bodily harm.

According to the court, the criminals injected five men with HIV-infected blood at sex parties hosted by the accused. They did so, according to the court “even though they themselves had personally experienced what the far-reaching consequences of infection are.”

The prosecutor had asked for terms of 15 years against the main two suspects and one of eight for the third man.

– by Gene J. Koprowski, Editorial Director and Nancy Bruening, Executive Editor

Assault with a deadly weapon — HIV.

Posted: November 13th, 2008 under Diseases, HIV, Impaired Immunity.
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Antibacterial drug use appears to have soared at academic medical centers between 2002 and 2006, driven primarily by increased use of broad-spectrum agents and the antibiotic vancomycin.

Use of antibacterial drugs dramatically increases the risk that pathogens will become resistant to their effects.

Infection with drug-resistant bacteria is linked with greater illness and death and higher health care costs than infection with bacteria susceptible to antibiotics. “Many professional societies and national agencies have recommended monitoring antibacterial use and linking patterns of use to resistance,” the authors of the new study, funded by Bayer.

Amy L. Pakyz, Pharm.D., of Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, and colleagues measured antibiotic use documented in claims data from university teaching hospitals between 2002 and 2006.

Statistics available from 35 hospitals in 2006—that year, a total of 775,731 patients were discharged, with 492,721, 63.5 percent, receiving an antibacterial drug.

The average total antibacterial use at the 22 hospitals providing five-year data increased from 798 days of therapy per every 1,000 days patients were in the hospital to 855 per 1,000 patient-days in 2006.

When doctors examined the drugs by class, fluoroquinolones were the most commonly used, and their use remained constant. “The other change contributing to the increase in total use was the marked increase in the use of vancomycin,” the authors write. “During five years, the mean [average] vancomycin use increased by 43 percent.”

“With few new antibacterials in development, antimicrobial stewardship programs in concert with aggressive infection control efforts represent the best chance for control of resistant pathogens,” the authors write.

– by Gene J. Koprowski, Editorial Director, and Nancy Bruening, Executive Editor

Doctors, nurses and other personnel at academic medical centers continue to dole out antibiotics.

Posted: November 12th, 2008 under Clostridium difficile, Developing Diseases, Impaired Immunity, MRSA.
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