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THURSDAY, Aug. 31 (HealthDay News) -- The prevalence of an infectious antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteria has now reached the level of a global pandemic, experts warn.
Of some 2 billion individuals estimated to be carrying S. aureus worldwide, anywhere from 2 million to 53 million are now believed to be carrying the methicillin-resistant strain, conclude the authors of a review article published in this week's edition of The Lancet.
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The rise of methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) is a symptom of a larger global problem, said outside experts.
"The issue is broader than MRSA," said Dr. Edward Chapnick, director of infectious diseases at Maimonides Medical Center in New York City. "The issue is antibiotic resistance as a whole. That's not the only resistant organism. It's a big problem, but it's not the only one, and at least it's treatable."
MRSA is indeed resistant to many standard antibiotics that have been used for years, but the bug can still be effectively treated with one of several antibiotics.
The bacteria lives uneventfully in the noses of many people, but sometimes it can trigger serious infection. Symptoms can range from an infected paper cut, to bloodstream infections, to infections of heart valves that can be fatal.
MRSA was, for a long time, limited to hospitals, nursing homes and other health care facilities or to people who had frequent contact with such facilities. In 1993, however, new strains among people who had not been in contact with the health care system emerged in Western Australia.
This development "heralded the worldwide recognition of the striking evolution of genuine community-acquired MRSA strains," wrote the authors of the The Lancet article, who are affiliated with the European Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance System in the Netherlands.
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