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What is MRSA?
MRSA (Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus) infection has acquired nightmarish proportions for healthcare workers these days. The infection is caused by a particularly mean strain of Staphylococcus aureus bacteria - which are called as "staph" in medical parlance.
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 as methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection. This infection is also dubbed as the "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 pretty 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 also failed to treat staph infections in those years.
Methicillin was introduced in 1959 and initially it was successful in treating penicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infections. However, when people ask, “What is MRSA?”, we usually take them back to 1961 when MRSA was first discovered in the UK. In 1961, the dreaded nightmare happened. Methicillin resistance was acquired by Staphylococcus aureus with the first cases being reported in the United Kingdom.
It was “discovered” in that it was first observed to resist the normal treatments. Hospitals in eastern Australia were the first to report 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.
MRSA was often confined to hospitals up to the late 1980s but, in the 1990s, it 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) or Hospital-Associated MRSA (HA-MRSA). The jump of MRSA from hospital settings to community settings is not so well documented although 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.
There is an Answer!
We spend more time on the wonderful results of essential oils and monolaurin on our main articles on the site. When you look at them, you will see our complete natural treatment system for MRSA. Because of the seriousness of MRSA, we have produced an Ultimate Staph Treatment:. It involves:
If you, or some you love, have MRSA symptoms, we invite you take a closer look in our website at: The 5-Step MRSA Treatment Plan.
Updated at 5/12/2009 12:14:54 PM