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New MRSA Strain May Be Deadly For Flu Patients

Posted on: Wednesday, 20 May 2009, 12:40 CDT

Researchers say that an antibiotic-resistant strain of the bacterium MRSA appears to be making flu patients susceptible to a deadly form of pneumonia.

More worrisome still is the fact that the new community acquired MRSA (CA-MRSA) is not limited to hospital settings unlike most commonly known strains of the superbug.

Publishing their report in the medical journal Lancet Infectious Diseases, a group of researchers from Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta say that the disease may have a mortality rate as high as 50 percent amongst those who contract it.

The team also expressed concerns that the spread of swine flu could exacerbate the problem, as some of their results seemed to indicate that CA-MRSA occurs more frequent in people who are already sick with the flu.

Just how big a threat the new microbe poses, however, is not yet clear.  Researchers say there is not yet enough data available to accurately estimate the prevalence of CA-MRSA in the community at large.

Occurring most frequently in healthcare facilities such as hospitals and nursing homes, the symptoms of typical MRSA strains can range from painful boils to infections in the lungs, blood and surgical wounds.

“Community-acquired MRSA infections are no longer restricted to certain risk groups or to the geographic areas where outbreaks first occurred,” wrote the research team.

“They now occur widely both in the community as well as health care facilities and have been reported on every continent.”

The group’s study was based on an examination of two cases in the U.S.  Both patients contracted bacterial pneumonia and exhibited high fever and low blood pressure before going into septic shock—a serious medical condition involving systemic bacterial infection.  Fatality rates for septic shock are generally in the 50 percent range. 

Both of the patients examined in the study eventually recovered.

Researchers say they are still not sure what makes the bacterium so dangerous.  They believe, however, that it originated in Australia in the 1990’s, but at that time only seemed to cause relatively mild problems with skin and soft tissue.

One positive sign that the researchers observed was that the new strain does appear to be more susceptible to antibiotics than standard MRSA infections.

“Bacterial pneumonia following influenza can be very serious and in some cases fatal,” said Professor Mark Enright, an infectious disease expert at Imperial College London.

“The emergence of pandemic influenza and increased prevalence of CA-MRSA in many countries may cause increased morbidity and mortality in infected individuals.”

Professor Ron Cutler of Queen Mary University of London added, “In the past, respiratory tract infections with MRSA tended to be in the elderly in a hospital ward… [but] the CA strains are able because of their increased toxic potential to infect a younger population.”

Professor Richard James of the University of Nottingham worries that this more dangerous form of MRSA could eventually become as widespread as the version that has plagued hospitals around the world since the 1990’s.

“It took [us] 13 years to get to grips with the hospital-acquired MRSA infection—we are not equipped to deal with large numbers of CA-MRSA infections in the community.”

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On the Net:

• Lancet Infectious Diseases
• Emory University School of Medicine

Source: redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports

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