Radio Shows | The MRSA Menace | mp3 … wma … wav

Today, we'll explore the"MRSA Menace"

MRSA stands for methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus, that's a mouthful. The mere mention of this bacteria can strike fear in doctors at hospitals.

That's because this potentially life threatening bacterium can easily spread from person to person and is resistant to most of the common antibiotics used today. And just like its name suggests - while other staph infections are treatable with antibiotics, MRSA is not.

What's so dangerous about it is how quickly it spreads and how it can quickly rapidly it can become life threatening. MRSA can initiate an infection through tiny breaks in the skin - sometimes pimples or razor irritations. Skin infections can rapidly lead to bloodstream infections or to the lungs and pneumonia.

Worse yet - it is showing up outside health care settings and is now in our communities. For example, there have been outbreaks among student athletes in college locker rooms. Even more scary, MRSA can survive in the environment on clothing, furniture, or exercise equipment and infect people who come in contact with these objects.

MRSA has a powerful arsenal that it uses to attack our cells and tissues in our bodies. It produces toxins to help it invade the skin and spread to deeper tissues. That allows it to avoid cells which normally destroy invading bacteria. MRSA essentially hijacks our body's immune response to further its growth.

The antibiotic vancomycin is the drug of last resort for MRSA, and that's scary since statistics show growing resistance to even this drug. And, because it can take about 12 years to get a new drug through FDA approval and to market, biomedical research has a great challenge on its hands.