Forget the "bird flu" for now

I've written before that panic is never a good response to anything, even when simultaneously saying that an issue is being over-hyped.

So don't panic.  Phrases such as "flesh-eating," sometimes applied to this type of bacterial infection, are kind of inflammatory.

But this isn't hype.  It's a warning.

As if threats of pandemic superflu weren't enough, yet another new and potentially fatal "superbug" is spreading worldwide — including in Tucson.

No mere threat, this bug has infected hundreds of Tucsonans already and hospitalized dozens, some with life-threatening illness.

Appearing at first as just a pimple, maybe a small cut, the infection often is mistaken by many victims — and their doctors — for a spider bite, delaying vital treatment.

Known as MRSA — methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus or "mersa" — it is in fact a highly contagious bacteria that has developed strong resistance to most antibiotics, making it hard to treat and setting the stage for dangerous invasive disease.

Mersa itself is actually nothing new. This resistant form of staph bacteria has been around for decades, but was limited mostly to outbreaks in hospital and nursing-home patients.

What's alarming doctors and public-health officials now is that mersa has moved into the general public — often infecting young people who have been nowhere near a hospital.

This is no theoretical epidemic like the H5N1 "bird flu."  This doesn't have to mutate, it's already all over the United States, and it has already hospitalized hundreds in the Tucson, AZ area alone, sometimes with life-threatening results.  One Tucson emergency room alone reports having treated about 541 cases this year, three times the number seen two years ago.  And unfortunately, not all states have even begun tracking mersa, nor is it being tracked on a national level.  Arizona began tracking it a year ago, and are now seeing 125 cases per month, and that's just the most severe ones.  They haven't tracked deaths.  I have no idea why not.

And while it's out of character for me to say something like this, the CDC or some other national medical agency or organization should have already been on the case.

So just how serious is this?

"It is absolutely the new superbug, and everyone is worried about it now," said Dr. Sean Elliott, a University of Arizona pediatrician who handles mersa in young patients.

"What is significant is that we are seeing lots of healthy individuals from the community who have developed severe skin disease, with more and more ending up as surgical cases, and some progressing to severe invasive disease."

In the past month, Elliott has treated five children with this form of life-threatening mersa. All have survived.

He has seen patients end up with chronic lung disease or disabled limbs after a mersa battle. He has handled nearly 30 entire families affected by it this year.

"This is a big one," he said. "It's not a cause for panic yet, but it's a bad player."

Not a cause for panic yet?  Nothing ever is, but that's not his point.

Unlike past years, mersa now can strike anyone anywhere, without warning or risk — an unexplained phenomenon occurring in developed countries worldwide.

However, no one yet knows the magnitude of mersa's spread. Exploding only in the past two years, "community-acquired" mersa has been reported in clusters in cities throughout the United States. But cases are not required to be officially confirmed to the government.

Again, there's no excuse for this.  Yes, the US federal government is a lumbering, elephantine bureaucracy that turns on a dime acre and responds quickly to nothing, not even terrorism.  But we can do better than this.

It's not my purpose to upbraid our government—or the states—for being slow to track this new threat, but it is my purpose to spread the word.

To date, 1,305 invasive cases have been reported, with 132 in Pima County. Deaths have not been tracked.

"That's probably a pretty significant underestimate," Elliott said. "This is going to have to change — it probably should be a reportable disease, if we're going to evaluate what's really going on."

...To date, 1,305 invasive cases have been reported, with 132 in Pima County [AZ]. Deaths have not been tracked.

"That's probably a pretty significant underestimate," Elliott said. "This is going to have to change — it probably should be a reportable disease, if we're going to evaluate what's really going on."

The baterium itself, staphylococcus aureus, is the most common cause of skin infections, and occurs everywhere.  About 30-40% of us carry it without showing any symptoms.  That's nothing new.

What is new is that it is now spreading rapidly among people to whom it would not have spread two years ago, and is causing much more dangerous illnesses when it does.

Scientists do not yet fully understand what triggers mersa to set off a bad skin infection, or move on to severe, possibly fatal disease. They only know that mersa can develop what is known as "virulent factors" — toxic proteins that make it extremely dangerous — and that it is spread through skin-to-skin contact or by contact with contaminated surfaces.

Mersa clusters have broken out on athletic teams — including the NFL's St. Louis Rams — and in prisons and among military recruits.

Clare Kioski, an epidemiologist with the state Department of Health Services, said there have been cases of invasive mersa in every Arizona county.

"If you have any kind of a skin wound that's not getting better, go to a doctor and be tested as soon as possible," she said.

Again, this isn't hype.  It's a warning.

The Steel Deal linked with IMPETIGO.

Comments

[Phoenix]

yuk