The MRSA march continues -- on keyboards and in class
Scott McPherson
in Politics and government, Popular Culture, influenza and infectious diseases
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1 Comment
The stream of MRSA-related newspaper articles has now developed into a flood of print and online activity. here is a digest of a few of today's stories:
Palmetto High School in a very affluent suburb of Miami, Florida, has been hit with a MRSA infection. Specifically, five members of the football team have been diagnosed as MRSA-positive. In adjacent Broward County, the district is awash in MRSA-suspected cases -- and also awash in parent complaints about the safety of several local schools. The story is at the Miami Herald Website: http://www.miamiherald.com/tropical_life/story/288484.html .
The New York Times reports on the death of Brooklyn seventh-grader Omar Rivera (photo), who died of MRSA this week. The Times article also mentions that in neighboring New Jersey, state officials sent a memo to the superintendents of the state’s 615 school districts asking them to report any individual MRSA cases to the Education Department. Since then, districts have reported about two dozen cases among students and staff in recent weeks, officials said. Quoting from the Times story:
In recent weeks, reported MRSA cases have cropped up in schools around the New York metropolitan region. Students at two separate schools in Longwood, in Suffolk County, were discovered to have the infection by members of the nursing staff, who were told a month ago to watch out for the symptoms, said Michael R. Lonergan, the deputy superintendent.
In Southampton, school officials sent out general information about MRSA to parents last week and disinfected locker rooms and wrestling mats as a precaution before learning that three high-school students, all athletes, had become infected, according to the schools superintendent, J. Richard Boyes.
The story is at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/nyregion/26infect.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&ref=todayspaper
The photo at left is of a MRSA cleanup in a Chicago school. The task is being repeated in classrooms, gyms and cafeterias across the nation.
Alert blog reader Richard Schmitt of the Florida Department of Education sent me this AP/CNN story, regarding a MRSA scrubdown of an entire school district in Kentucky.
PIKEVILLE, Kentucky (AP) -- An eastern Kentucky school district with one confirmed case of antibiotic-resistant staph infection plans to shut down all 23 of its schools Monday, affecting about 10,300 students, to disinfect the facilities.The project will involve disinfecting classrooms, restrooms, cafeterias, hallways, locker rooms, buses and even external areas such as playgrounds and sports fields, said Roger Wagner, superintendent of Pike County schools.
"We're not closing schools because there's been a large number of breakouts, but as a preventive measure," Wagner said.
Two weeks ago, students staged a sit-in at the lunch room of Pike Central High School in effort to get school officials to clean the school as protection against the bacteria.
Most abandoned the sit-in after Principal David Rowe threatened them with a three-day suspension, but 33 stayed and were given the choice of one day of in-school suspension or two days out-of-school suspension.
Three chose out-of-school suspension.
A wise choice for the students. The story is at http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/10/27/mrsa.school.cleaning.ap/index.html .
So the truth is out there, Mulder, and the truth is we have a massive, underground, unreported epidemic of MRSA rolling across the nation. Everything from wicked-looking scrapes to misdiagnosed brown recluse spider bites are probably, in fact, MRSA infections (see my earlier blog, http://www.scottmcpherson.net/journal/2007/10/24/excellent-apmsnbc-story-on-lax-hospital-protocols.html, for details).
Some think the story is overblown, and many in the media and the Blogosphere equivalent of the Flat Earth Society are dismissing the MRSA flood of stories as the New Bird Flu. Of course, if you are reading this, then you know what side of THAT debate you sit on. But it is preposterous to poo-poo MRSA as much ado about nothing when we do not even know the tip of the iceberg regarding potential vectors of infection.
Speaking of vectors of MRSA infection, how about this one? A link to a research paper was sent to me by alert blogger Robyn Klein, AHG herbalist, MSc. Medical Botany, and an adjunct instructor with the Department of Plant Sciences and Plant Pathology at Montana State University. Her blogsite is http://www.rrreading.com/index.html.
The paper is titled "Public computer surfaces are reservoirs for methicillin-resistant staphylococci", and the authors are Issmat I Kassem, Von Sigler and Malak A Esseili of the Laboratory for Microbial Ecology, Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Toledo, Toledo, Ohio. I was able to procure the paper privately.
The following is just from the foreword!
The role of computer keyboards used by students of a metropolitan university as reservoirs of antibiotic-resistant staphylococci was determined. Putative methicillin (oxacillin)-resistant staphylococci isolates were identified from keyboard swabs following a combination of biochemical and genetic analyses. Of 24 keyboards surveyed, 17 were contaminated with staphylococci that grew in the presence of oxacillin (2mgl1). Methicillin (oxacillin)-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), -S. epidermidis (MRSE) and -S. hominis (MRSH) were present on two, five and two keyboards, respectively, while all three staphylococci co-contaminated one keyboard. Furthermore, these were found to be part of a greater community of oxacillin-resistant bacteria. Combined with the broad user base common to public computers, the presence of antibiotic-resistant staphylococci on keyboard surfaces might impact the transmission and prevalence of pathogens throughout the community.
The article is available for purchase at: http://www.nature.com/ismej/journal/v1/n3/abs/ismej200736a.html.
All-righty then! Public keyboards -- in universities, in libraries, in classrooms, at kiosks, at ATM machines, I'll let you fill in your imagination here -- are now proven vectors of MRSA. This means that the equipment kids use in school has to be decontaminated frequently, and probably daily.
I will say what everyone is, or should be, thinking. We are ushering in the Golden Age of Disease. Killer bugs, resistant to the best antibiotics, are growing in our schools, prisons, jails, colleges, hospitals, and probably churches too if we bothered to check. Influenzas with the capacity to kill hundreds of millions are brewing in the bellies of wild birds, in the throats of unknowing chickens and ducks, and in God knows how many pigs, cats and dogs across Asia. Mosquitoes are spreading across the developing world with almost unthinkable misery-causing and deadly pathogens.
And it is all heading our way. MRSA just beat the rest to Home Base. Home base is every playground, school, gymnasium, hospital and public meeting place in America.
Makes you want to start using your gloves now, doesn't it? How we manage such issues as seasonal flu, MRSA, and other diseases gives us clues as to how we will manage the Next Pandemic.
Early returns show we won't fare well at all.
Reader Comments (1)
Trying to find facts associated with Bruce Wilcox's guest spot on Public Radio on August 10, 2009 in which he described a "combo" treatment for MRSA. The combo included lactoferrin, xylitol, and (here's my question) the third ingredient was something like "hemotomin". Anyone know what that was? Can't find a like to Wilcox on NPR site. Wilcox said this combo was highly successful for treating MRSA. I can get the first 2 ingredients, but what is the third and where to get it? Thanks - Em in Vegas