The age of easily eliminating bacterial infections with antibiotics may be ending. Two recent reports in Morbidity Mortality Weekly Report have documented infections with a bacteria, Staphylococcus aureus, that is less sensitive to an antibiotic called vancomycin. One of the patients was four month old boy in Japan who had developed a Staphylococcus aureus infection after surgery. The other patient was in the United States and he had an infection of his abdomen (peritonitis).
No big deal you say. This happens all the time. Unfortunately, resistance to this antibiotic is a really really bad thing. Vancomycin is the last resort antibiotic. When certain Staphylococcus aureus strains are resistant to all the other antibiotics (MRSA; methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus), vancomycin has been the patient's last chance treatment. There are no other antibiotics to use if these MRSA strains becomes totally resistant to vancomycin.
Fortunately, for now, the Staphylococcus aureus isolates mentioned above were only intermediate in resistance to vancomycin. Basically, this means that in order to kill the bacteria in a test tube more vancomycin was needed. Eight micrograms/milliliter of vancomycin was necessary to kill these two bacterial strains rather than less than four micrograms/milliliter seen with most other Staphylococcus aureus strains. This resistance by Staphylococcus aureus strains to killing by vancomycin makes it very difficult for the physician. Doctors do not usually treat a patient's bacterial infection with antibiotics that are only intermediate in their killing ability.
Staphylococcus aureus is a round bacteria that can cause pneumonia, and infections of the bloodstream, skin, soft tissues, and bone. This bacteria is a very frequent cause of human infections and is the most common cause of infection in patients while in the hospital (nosocomial-acquired infection). Before antibiotics were routinely used to treat ill patients, Staphylococcus aureus was the most common cause of death. This bacterium is a nasty one.
Now don't give up hope just yet. We will not be seeing millions die overnight even if this bacteria becomes totally resistant to vancomycin. Most healthy people do not have problems with Staphylococcus aureus. In fact a large number of us carry this bacteria in our noses. It is usually when we get sick from some other infection (ex. the flu), or have surgery that this organism causes major problems. There are also a number of things that can be done to prevent the spread of these nasty bacteria. Doctors are now being told to only use vancomycin to treat patient when it is absolutely necessary. If one of these vancomycin resistant strains is isolated from a patient the patient should be isolated in the hospital and health-care workers monitored. If research funding continues new antibiotics may be
Go To Page: 1 2
