Drug resistant staph

[Kronk]

One of the martial arts I do is Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, which is basically wrestling until someone submits (gets choked out or gets into a joint lock they can't get out of). Sometimes we have classes with gi (uniform); other times we do no-gi, where we wear shorts and T-shirts. Obviously there is a whole lot of body contact.

A few months ago I was sparring in a no-gi class for around 10 minutes with one guy. The next week he stops in with part of his leg wrapped and says that he has MRSA. I had a few weeks where I was worried about getting it, but fortunately I didn't.

Including that guy, I've known three people who have gotten MRSA, none of them in the hospital. Hopefully it is a coincidence that all three I met through martial arts, though none of them seemed to have contracted it because of martial arts.

 

[Rich_by_the_Bay]

Including that guy, I've known three people who have gotten MRSA, none of them in the hospital. Hopefully it is a coincidence that all three I met through martial arts, though none of them seemed to have contracted it because of martial arts.

Strictly speaking, MRSA is not a disease or a diagnosis, it's a bacterium so you don't "get MRSA." You get a specific infection such as cellulitis (skin infection), blood infection (sepsis), or other type of infection where MRSA is the culprit. The exact same diagnoses can be caused by other germs just as well, including strep and many others. Furthermore, many people are carriers of MRSA but have no "infections" - they might be picked up in some type of screening or surveillance culture for unrelated issues.

I'd say full contact martial arts is a good way to expose yourself to staph from others who carry it, MRSA or otherwise. That doesn't mean you will develop a MRSA-generated infection or even become a carrier, though both are possible.

I am unaware of any way one can be confident about where the staph was contracted, other than in highly unusual circumstances.

 

[laurence]

Thanks to all for the info/corrections. Rich, as always it's great to have a Doctor in the house!

So Staph itself is a serious concern for the health care community, but we won't be acting out King's "The Stand" because of it. Influenza is viral (duh - I know I knew that, brain fart, thanks SamClem), is there an easily communicable bacterial infection that could take advantage of becoming anti-biotic resistant?

 

[Rich_by_the_Bay]

So Staph itself is a serious concern for the health care community, but we won't be acting out King's "The Stand" because of it. ...is there an easily communicable bacterial infection that could take advantage of becoming anti-biotic resistant?

All bacteria have the potential to become resistant. It's like Darwinian evolution in fast motion: hit em with antibiotics and it kills 99.9% of them. But their population is in the several millions so a few might survive who happen to be resistant just by random mutation. They repopulate and voila.

For that reason, for serious infection we grow the bugs then test them in the lab against common antibiotics to see what they are resistant to. We do a pretty good job with this. And there are drugs for MRSA that are very effective -- just don't want to overuse them when they aren't needed (though pharma ads sometimes encourge usage in their choice of formatting and font size, pictures of vicious tigers and damsels in distress).

I treat MRSA weekly if not daily. Bad as it is, it's not a flesh-eating, nontreatable death sentence in the vast majority of people.

 

[samclem]

. . . is there an easily communicable bacterial infection that could take advantage of becoming anti-biotic resistant?

Okay, subject to revision by folks far more knowledegable than I . . .

Resistant strains of TB are a big problem, as there are several strains known to be out there. You may remember the recent incident in which a American suspected to have a resistant TB strain took an international flight and exposed a lot of folks. As it turned out, his strain of TB did respond to antibiotics. TB isn't incredibly infectious, but it's easy to catch it if you are near a carrier for a long time. Physical contact is not required.

Cholera and Typhoid are both nasty bacteriological diseases, ad there are strains of each that have developed resistance to the traditional antibiotics of choice. These are generally spread through food, and good hygiene among food workers (and use of proper public sanitation) can prevent an epidemic. Typhoid isn't usually fatal, cholera requires good supportive care and can be fatal without it.

Lots of other bacteriological diseases (plague, tularemia, etc) require an insect vector, so that provides a means to combat their spread.

Syphilis and gonorrhea are both bacterial. Resistant Gonorrhea starins are a real problem in some areas (esp Hawaii and California). There are signs of syphillis that is resistant to pennicillin, but that treatment still works very well.

Sorry, all out of sunny news for now.

samclem

 

[Rich_by_the_Bay]

What Sam said.

Sam, need a job?

 

[FinallyRetired]

Resistant strains of TB are a big problem, as there are several strains known to be out there.

There's a mycobacterium that causes TB in fish and that humans can also get. In fact the disease is known as fish TB, or fish handler's disease, and it's getting more widespread. In humans doesn't cause TB but causes a nasty skin infection that's resistant to common antibiotics. The scientific name is mycobacterium marinum, and it's present in many waters in the US and around the world. In the Chesapeake it's present in many rock fish, so fishermen can get it if they're not wearing glove and get scraped by the fish scales. You can also get it from scrapes while cleaning fish tanks, or from coral. Reason I know about it, I caught it while cleaning the bottom of my sailboat in the caribbean and scraping my hand on coral growth.

It starts with a minor cut or scrape that doesn't heal, just stays the same for a week or so then gradually gets redder and larger, but still not a big deal. But the bug gets in the lymphatic system and starts working its way up your arm, leg, or wherever you got the scrape, and you begin to see some boils that are just under the surface. I got about 3 or 4 up my arm before I saw the doc. At first my GP gave me the standard antibiotics but it didn't touch it. I then got referred to an infectious disease doc who biopsied and grew it, told me what it was, and gave me three antibiotics that I had to take for six months. The pills messed with my stomach and made me feel very tired, so after a while he removed one and kept up the other two. After a couple of months the sores were gone, so he allowed me to get off the pills completely, and it hasn't returned.

It's a nasty infection, though it won't kill you. If left untreated, it continues to make colonies just underneath the skin that become painful and eventually break out and bleed. It also goes in joints and can give you lifelong arthritis. Fortunately, it doesn't grow well at internal body temperatures, which is why it doesn't give TB in the lungs. When I read about that, I began to use hot compresses on my infected areas, as hot as I could stand it, and I think that also helped.

Rich may correct me if I got any of this wrong, but it's one of those things that are nice to know about and avoid if one is around coral, cleaning fishtanks, etc.

 

[Rich_by_the_Bay]

Rich may correct me if I got any of this wrong, but it's one of those things that are nice to know about and avoid if one is around coral, cleaning fishtanks, etc.

Right!

Then there's mycobacterium intracellulare (bird TB) that people can get, and Valley Fever (Az, San Joaquin Valley of Calif, etc.), histoplasmosis in the midwest (usually but not always asymptomatic), the ever-present Lyme Disease in the upper midwest, Long Island and many other places; toxoplasmosis from your cat; you can still get plague - yes, plague as in bubonic plague - in certain areas near the 4-corners region, and the ever-popular giardiasis almost anywhere.

Personally, I rarely leave my house and when I do, it is with a mask and gloves, Purell dripping from my body. It's hard making friends.

 

[twaddle]

Interesting bacteria factoid (according to Wikipedia, anyway): humans have more bacteria than we do human cells. About 10 times as many. We're basically big walking bacteria.

 

[boglehead2]

Don't be alarm on what you see in the news. Most of the time or lately the alarmist from the local government are issuing press release because they want money, piece of the pie or grant from the federal government.

Yes there is drug restistant diseases out there but we don't have an outbreak or it is not an epidemic. Check your local government for the morbidity report on any infectious diseases and you will discover that all of the cases are down. Much of the local government public health are over staff and have nothing to do. They go out and investigate tb diseases for a whole month, finds one person that crosses the border with tb and issue a press release.

As I said there are drug resistant strains out there but it is 1 or 2 percent of the population. They are currently under treatment. We have good drugs out there that treats this patient.

Sadly it is all about money and funding or the piece of the pie.

 

[laurence]

Fascinating! In a morbid kind of way...thanks Sam/Rich/SoonToRetire.

Twaddle, I guess that makes us hosts, perhaps the bacteria has allowed/assisted us to evolve into intelligent beings to maximize our population size and increase the number of all night buffet hotels on the planet.

 

[twaddle]

Twaddle, I guess that makes us hosts, perhaps the bacteria has allowed/assisted us to evolve into intelligent beings to maximize our population size and increase the number of all night buffet hotels on the planet.

That reminds me -- we haven't had a good thread on evolution in a while.

We are basically powered by mitochondria. They produce ATP -- the stuff we burn at the cellular level.

Mitochondria look like little bacteria, and it's thought that they evolved from symbiotic bacteria. So, we truly are hosts for the little buggers in many ways, and we wouldn't even exist as a species without them.

 

[lazygood4nothinbum]

Personally, I rarely leave my house and when I do, it is with a mask and gloves, Purell dripping from my body. It's hard making friends.

and just when i thought you were taking all the fun out of panic. you just gave me my holloween costume for this year. thanx doc.

 

[Rich_by_the_Bay]

and just when i thought you were taking all the fun out of panic. you just gave me my holloween costume for this year. thanx doc.

So, you're going to be a jar of Purell for Halloween?

 

[Brat]

Most of you don't remember the days when antibiotics weren't generally available. People routinely died of phenomia, TB, and infected wounds. I am alive today because I was admitted to an Army hospital as a toddler in the very early 40s and treated with a then experimental antibiotic.