A friend of my son got the disease after having surgery for a broken Femur, but it was not during surgery that he got the diseases it was months later when he went to get the screws remove from his leg.

And yes is happening very often around my neck of the woods.

Not entirely true. There are several antibiotics that can beat this infection. It's just that the most COMMON antibiotics don't work on it. And the best ones aren't usually available as a pill. MRSA is actually quite susceptible to certain antibiotics, but highly resistant to others. Generally if the dr suspects you of having MRSA they will test to see which antibiotic it's resistant to. The reason that they say it's antibiotic resistant is because the most common antibiotics (penicillin and methicillin) don't affect it well.

There's a new strain out called CA-MRSA, or Commuity Acquired-MRSA. This strain seems to be more resistant to most antibiotics but there are still several that affect it either alone or in combination with another drug.

alright, i wasn't afraid of this up until a week ago

seriously, this stuff is everywhere in my neighborhood, it can get on anyone, wash your hands

this is a very severe outbreak

Hi There. I am in Ohio and MRSA is breaking out in pockets here as well. I wonder how many parts of the country actually have this going on. My husband is a RN and he is telling me the number of cases has increased 10 fold.
I know I saw a woman at work the other day that had MRSA or another type of thing that was going to cause her to lose her legs and she didn't even have the open sores covered. Scary stuff.

Well, another of my sons friends had been diagnosed with MRSA, so far he caught it from the place where he and my son does their martial arts.

My son is now worry about the whole deal, his friend had it on his elbow and was smart enough to see his doctor immediately.

Two new cases here this week, on top of one last week.
Three total in my area, all in middle schools.

Well in the news today it was more reported cases in the Atlanta area link to the Bus system, now they are urging people that use the bus system to keep an eye to any skin problems that looks like mosquito bites and fever.

Is legislation now to help with the research on new antibiotics.

I am surprise that is not more media information on this new emerging epidemic.

Was just down in Knoxville, TN. On drive back up to Indiana I saw headline in Cynthiana, Ky paper I believe about outbreak there. Add Ky to the list...

Oklahoma and Arkansas are also on the list. I suspect that this is world wide at this point. I've known about it for some years as the doctors that treat my son all worry about it because he has a weak immune system.

Yes, according to them, it can be treated. The trick seems to be catching it before it does too much damage. Many people have MRSA, but our own immune system usually keeps it in check. The worst danger is to the elderly and the very young, and to people that have other medical problems. Or to people like football players that have temporary stress to their immune system from certain activities.

I'm no authority, but that's the way the doctors have explained it to us.

You could always get in contact with the lab in Tbilisi and buy some phage for MRSA.

In the end, I think that phage therapy is going to make a comeback soon, it was nuts to abandon that.

I agree with Tom Bedlam here in that Bacteriophage treatment is a good candidate for helping to slow the infection rate of this bacterium. One area of interest with this treatment would be the evolutionary replication cycles between the two, wherein the bacterium would slightly mutate its DNA to gain ground, but the Bacteriophage would do the same to counterbalance their existence. In fact, I believe a novel approach would use a virus from the family Myoviridae against Lactococcus lactis and/or antibiotic resistant strains of Staphylococci, as I am aware of a few recent studies showing the expression of controlled recombinant Lysin being able to degrade the cellular walls of certain staphylococcal bacterium including methicillin resistant strains. These Lysin enzymes need to specifically hydrolyse bonds in the murein or pepidoglycan layers of infected cells in order to complete the final stage of the replication process. In less than efficient Bacteriophages, complications with cell wall strength can arise giving way to ineffective budding, which cannot keep up with bacterial evolution. Non-enveloped Bacteriophages with a contractile tail like those found in Myoviridae (Enterobacteria Viruses, T4, or Phage K) have a larger range of hosts they can infect including coagulase positive and negative staphylococci, and do not require the addition of specific protein receptors in order to infect a larger range of hosts. This essentially means that viruses such as Phage K can infect a greater range of bacterium and display the characteristics needed to evolve above the host genome. Because Myoviridae are dsDNA viruses, which means they are double stranded with two alternating sugar a phosphate groups bound by hydrogen between bases, they have a better chance to adapt and infect their host than viruses with ssDNA due to structural variants. It is very important that the ability of the bacteriophage to infect the host with viral DNA or RNA be somewhat congruent to the genome of its host.

Anyhow, I personally believe that Phage therapy could eventually replace most antibiotics and possibly even a large number of vaccines. Of particular interest to me is the use of their Cre Recombinase enzyme that can be engineered into Tre Recombinase to cut out pieces along the long terminal repeats of RNA during Reverse Transcriptase. There really are some novel alternatives out there, but as some have noted previously, it will be a number of years before we see the large scale implementation of these treatments.

I really don't understand the resistance to developing phage as a treatment modality for bacterial infection, but it seems pretty common outside of Russia.

It's very very specific, self-limiting, and if you had labs keeping it "updated" the viruses can keep up with the mutations the bacteria use for defense. Nothing like using the same mechanisms to keep your treatment up to date that the bacteria are using to dodge the axe.

I think it's probably a lack of education on how viruses work, so everyone sees viruses as "bad" or "germs" instead of being little shock troops murdering the bacteria and only the bacteria.

Well, that, and we had this idea of tailored plasmids that confer sensitivity to an antibiotic instead of protection, but no one seems to be doing that either.

Outbreaks in schools have become almost daily fodder for the press here in Ohio. Is it weakened immune systems or a mutated bug? I believe that is the question. The disease process is quite horrific. I see a real life version of 'captain tripps' ala 'The Stand' coming to fruition here in its early stages. Wish all those bioscientists didn't wind up getting dead so close together. This worries me greatly.

Yeah, it's a real problem here in Waco and McClenan county as well... There are posters saying to "wash your hands" in just about every restroom you go into. It's scaring the hell out of a bunch of people.

Originally posted by jpm1602
Is it weakened immune systems or a mutated bug? I believe that is the question.

It can be caused by a number of different factors, but it is also a natural part of Bacterial evolution. That is, when mutations occur in the genome of bacteria they essentially gain or lose certain genes depending on survival rates in the host. These genes are directly responsible for ensuring the defense and culpability of the bacterium in lieu of environmental dangers. Specifically with Staphylococci there is a gene called mecA, which is transported on a mobile genetic element called "mec", and inexpression of this gene rarely occurs due to stability factors associated with the original chromosome cassette found in the bacteria. When this gene is found in species of this bacterium it acts to not let Penicillin and/or Methicillin bind with protein receptors on the cell wall. In other words, the introduction of antibiotics in the form of variants of Penicillin have forced the bacterium to express mecA as a natural defense mechanism for survival. Of particular importance is Beta lactam antibiotics including both Penicillin and Cephalosporin, which have demonstrated an acute resistance to binding with the aforementioned surface proteins. Bacterium which do not display the mecA gene are treatable, but it's much like playing a cat and mouse game where novel antibiotics are always trying to gain the upper hand over their less than evolved foes.

AKA super tuburculosis infection not responding to conventional antibiotics.
The patient is placed in lockdown waiting for death.