Journalist and Author
Constant readers, we’ve often talked about MRSA and other resistant pathogens as a global problem (cf. these posts for resistance issues in Europe and these for resistance around the world). But now there has been formal recognition that resistant bacteria respect no borders. On Nov. 3, the US government and the European Union signed an […]
Folks, I mentioned that I’m way behind in working down a stack of great articles. Here’s a very good one that I missed when it came out two weeks ago and is well worth your time. A team from John H. Stroger Hospital (the new location of the iconic Cook County Hospital, public hospital for […]
Readers, we talk all the time here about the unexpected and deadly attack of MRSA pneumonia, both on its own and as a sequela of influenza infection. But we should acknowledge that MRSA pneumonia is part of an epidemic of pneumonia, an under-appreciated disease of severe lung inflammation that takes the lives of 2 million […]
Well, constant readers, didn’t expect to be gone *that* long. Many apologies. There was a good reason — actually, several: I attended a journalism meeting, and spoke at a second meeting. But most important, I received, marked up, and returned the galleys of SUPERBUG. Yes, it’s really starting to look like a book now. There […]
Every year, the CDC sponsors a week-long observance called Get Smart About Antibiotics Week, intended to bring attention to this issue of antibiotic misuse that all of us here are so concerned about, and to link the efforts of federal and state agencies, nonprofit groups, and anyone else with an interest. Today marks the start […]
I want to introduce you all to a MRSA campaigner, Jeanine Thomas of Chicago. Jeanine — whose story will be told in SUPERBUG — is the founder of World MRSA Day, a worldwide event of activism and grieving that will take place Friday, Oct. 2. There will be simultaneous observances in the UK, and a […]
The CDC’s MMWR report on their analysis of bacterial co-infections in H1N1 flu deaths has been placed online here. And there are two excellent analyses of it by the marvelous blogs Effect Measure and Mike the Mad Biologist.
When the H1N1 pandemic started at the end of last April, few of the case-patients seemed to have any secondary bacterial infections. This was unusual: In the 3 20th-c pandemics, the only ones for which there are good records, bacterial pneumonias seem to have accounted for a high percentage of illness and death. But H1N1 […]
Constant readers, I’ve been behind the Great Firewall of China for two weeks, unable to post. (Apparently Blogger is not always unavailable there, but access has tightened up in advance of the National Day celebrations on Oct. 1.) I left with a file of things to post in my spare time — and so now […]
I want to highlight a comment that was left on Labor Day by a woman named Valorie in Arkansas (thank you for reading, Valorie). She said: I am just now learning about all of this and am very concerned about my 12 year old daughter. We were only 10 days into the school year, and […]
Hello again, constant readers. It’s been an exciting few weeks at Casa Superbug. I’ll spare you the details — most of them are both grueling and trivial — but out of the murk, here is a piece of excellent news: SUPERBUG has been edited, revised and sent back to the publisher, who has sent it […]
Constant readers, we’ve talked frequently about the emerging recognition that the enormous use of antibiotics in agriculture is fueling the development of resistance, both directly in the case of specific organisms such as MRSA ST-398, and indirectly in that it pushes the evolution of resistance factors that bacteria then trade amongst themselves. (For a superb […]
Thanks to a commenter who alerted me to this sad story: A teenager in Austin died of a combination of H1N1 flu and MRSA pneumonia. Constant readers will know that we have been watching for this for a while; MRSA pneumonia is a known and dangerous complication of any flu infection. For stories for CIDRAP […]
… and then next week I’ll be back to analyzing the medical literature: A stack of interesting new journal articles is threatening to topple and bury my computer. For the moment, though: First, the Hearst newspapers chain has conducted a nationwide investigation into medical errors that should be required reading for anyone who wonders why […]
Folks, while I was caught in travel hell, some excellent stories and blogposts were released. Here’s a quick round-up of recommendations for a rainy weekend: At Roll Call (covers Congress like a blanket), Ramanan Laxminarayan, PhD MPH, of the rational-use-of-antibiotics project Extending the Cure and infection-control physician Ed Septimus, MD make a strong argument for […]
Let’s switch back for a moment to MRSA and other infections in hospitals. An estimated 1.7 million healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) occur in the US each year. Approximately 99,000 of the infected die. Care for the infected costs the health care system $33 billion (yes, with a B) each year. The US Department of Health and […]
I know that many of you who are MRSA patients, especially with recurrent infections, are especially interested in the issue of decolonization, the grueling regimen of antibiotic nasal gel (containing mupirocin; usually sold as Bactroban) combined with body washes with chlorhexidine (Hibiclens) that is believed to eradicate MRSA carriage in the nose and on the […]
By chance — or is it because interest is really picking up? — a couple of worthwhile stories on MRSA have been published almost simultaneously: For when the science gets wonky: Environmental Health Perspectives has an excellent lay-language explanation of how drug resistance emerges and spreads — with gorgeous graphics! For when yet another drug […]
There’s a very interesting piece in a recent New England Journal of Medicine (unfortunately, only the abstract is online) that draws parallels between MRSA and public expectations for pandemic flu. Written by Dr. Kent Sepkowitz, chief of infection control at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and one of the authors of the “Medical […]
For anyone who cares about the overuse of antibiotics in food animals, and the resistant bacteria that overuse has been shown to produce, this is important news. In testimony today, new FDA Commissioner Dr. Joshua Sharfstein announced the administration’s opposition to the use of growth promoters: sub-therapeutic doses of antibiotics used not as disease treatment, […]