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What is MRSA?
MRSA infections have acquired nightmarish proportions for healthcare workers these days. The infection is caused by a particularly mean strain of Staphylococcus aureus bacteria - which is often just called "staph" (though there are other strains of staph).
Staphylococcus aureus bacteria are a normal part of the bacterial flora that colonize the nose and skin of healthy people. Staph bacteria normally not cause virulent infections and are often associated with skin infections like pimples and boils. Commonly available antibiotics can treat these staph infections.
Over the years, staph bacteria have gradually become resistant to all, but the most lethal antibiotics. This condition is called a methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection. This infection is also dubbed as a "Superbug" infection owing to its ability to beat all antibiotics. While staph bacteria normally colonize the nose and skin of people without causing any infections, the very young and the very old along with patients who have a weak immune system, are at a high risk of acquiring MRSA infection.
A Bit of History
MRSA has a relatively recent history. Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928. The antibiotic began to be deployed on a large scale to fight all types of bacterial infections in the 1940s. However as is the trend, drug resistance became a problem with penicillin and its related family in the late 1950s. Other antibiotics like erythromycin, streptomycin, and tetracycline were developed. As time went along, they also began to fail to treat staph infections. Methicillin was introduced in 1959 and initially it was successful in treating penicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infections.
However, the arise of MRSA (methicillin resistant staph) is usually dated back to 1961 when MRSA was first discovered in the UK. In 1961, the dreaded nightmare happened. Staphylococcus aureus developed a resistance to methicillinwas with the first cases being reported in the United Kingdom.
MRSA was “discovered” only in that it was first observed to resist the normal treatments. Hospitals in eastern Australia were the first to report larger MRSA outbreaks in the 1970s. In the next decade MRSA had acquired nightmarish proportions in hospitals and many European facilities were struggling to deal with staph infections.
Community-Associated MRSA
MRSA was usually confined to hospitals up to the late 1980s but, in the 1990s, MRSA began to proliferate in the community as well. Now when people ask, “What is MRSA?”, we have include a sub-category known as Community-Associated MRSA (CA-MRSA) with now sub-catagory Hospital-Associated MRSA (HA-MRSA).
The jump of MRSA from hospital settings to community settings is not so well documented. Community can include rest home facilities, communal (sport) showers and other confinement areas. Recent cases of sporadic outbreaks in prison inmates means that healthcare workers will now be hard-pressed to understand the dynamics of the superbug. MRSA primarily spreads by contact so people can get it if they touch a person who harbors the bacteria on their skin.
MRSA is resistant to treatment with all of the beta-lactam family of antibiotics including methicillin, amoxicillin, penicillin, oxacillin, and many other broad-spectrum antibiotics. Thus far researchers have managed to isolate at least 11 MRSA clones as per Mark C. Enright, D. Ashley Robinson, Gaynor Randle, Edward J. Feil, Hajo Grundmann, and Brian G. Spratt , PNAS 2002 99: 7687-7692; (published online on 10.1073/pnas.122108599).
Only vancomycin seems to be effective against MRSA at the moment although researchers are feverishly working to discover newer antibiotics to get rid of this staph superbug.
Our Answer - A 3-Step MRSA Treatment System
When we first began to see the symptoms of MRSA, we began to understand how serious MRSA is. We spent a tremendous amount of time to produce the first complete natural treatment system for MRSA. It involves:
1. An external ultimate Skin Infection Defense,
2. An internal infection treatment with Monolaurin,
3. An environmental antibacterial soap, shampoo and air products
If you, or some you love, has symptoms of MRSA, we invite you take a closer look at how our 3-Step MRSA Treatment System is so effective in fighting MRSA.
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