A team of researchers in South Dakota have announced the development of a new antimicrobial paint that appears to be effective against a number of bacteria, including Stapylococcus aureus. To read more please click on the following link:

http://www.webmd.com/news/20090416/super-strong-paint-kills-superbugs

The citation for the original article: Zhengbing, C. ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, Feb. 25, 2009; vol 1: pp 494-504.

A number of retail stores and pharmacies have made efforts in recent years to provide certain prescription medications at either a low rate or free of charge. While laudable in their intent, these policies have great potential to undermine progress that has been made in reducing unnecessary antibiotic use and rates of antimicrobial resistance. This topic has now hit the mainstream media. A recent article in the New York Times highlights the problem with free antibiotics. To read more, click on this link:                     http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/05/health/policy/05drugs.html?_r=1

GUARD is pleased to offer a lecture on Community Associated Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (CA-MRSA) as part of a statewide educational campaign. Physicians can get 1.25 Continuing Medical Education cretdits through the Medical College of Georgia for participating in this activity. Both the lecture and the CME offer can be accessed by clicking on the following link: http://www.mcg.edu/ce/Online/mrsaonline.htm Physicians can listen alone or listen and get credit. Please follow instructions on the linked web-page to claim CME credit. The first 250 physicians  to respond to the offer will receive these credits for free. The cost for any further physicians is $10.

9,700 pirmary care physicians throughout Georgia received educational packets in September of 2008 that contain a variety of materials on CA-MRSA. These materials include a fact sheet, a patient discharge form, a poster, and a two-page synopsis of CDC recommendations on management of CA-MRSA infections. All of these materials are also available for download on this website. Please go to the "Educational Materials" tab to find them. 

Any member of the public can also listen to this lecture for free. To do so, click on the same link: http://www.mcg.edu/ce/Online/mrsaonline.htm. Scroll down the page giving instructions to physicians, then click on "view online program".

This effort represents a collaboration between GUARD, the Georgia Department of Human Resources, and the Georgia MRSA Task Force, with additional assistance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

From August "Emergency Medicine Today", American College of Emergency Medicine

 Adverse effects from antibiotics send thousands to EDs annually, research indicates.

MedPage Today (8/13, Gever) reported that "[a]dverse effects from antibiotics led to more than 140,000 emergency [department] visits in the U.S. annually from 2004 through 2006, accounting for one-fifth of all such drug-related events," according to research published online in Clinical Infectious Diseases. Investigators "analyzed adverse-event data from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System and Cooperative Adverse Drug Event Surveillance projects, developed by the CDC, the FDA, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission." The researchers "also used data on outpatient antibiotic prescription volume from several national surveys of ambulatory care providers." The "[d]ata...revealed a total of 6,614 visits related to outpatient antibiotic therapy, which was extrapolated to an annual national volume of 142,505 visits." The researchers found that "[a]llergic reactions accounted for an estimated 78.7 percent of antibiotic-related events." The investigators added that the "[a]ntibiotic classes most commonly involved with adverse events were the penicillins, fluoroquinolones, and cephalosporins, which were involved in 36.9 percent, 13.5 percent, and 12.2 percent of visits, respectively."

Resistance mechanisms among gram negative organisms have become more numerous and complex. This review article found on the Medscape web site is a nice synopsis for the interested reader. Click on this link to access the article:

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/572674?src=mp&spon=17&uac=70149SJ

 

 (From "Emergency Medicine Today", April 22 2008)

Medscape (4/21, Berrie) reported that "[t]he oxazolidinone antibiotic linezolid is at least as effective as vancomycin for the treatment of patients with complicated skin and soft tissue infections (cSSTIs) that are proven to be caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), according to" a study presented in Barcelona at the 18th European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases. Kamal M. F. Itani, M.D., of the Philadelphia Veteran's Affairs Medical Center, Pennsylvania, and colleagues randomly assigned more than 1,000 "patients...to receive either linezolid (n=544), 600 mg intravenously (IV) or orally every 12 hours, or vancomycin (n=533) IV every 12 hours." These "treatments were continued for seven to 14 days." Dr. Itani said that "[l]inezolid proved to be at least as effective as vancomycin, with higher numerical success rates at" the end of the study "for the treatment of cSSTIs caused by MRSA."

Study suggests MRSA screening at hospital admission may not curb infection rates. Reuters (3/12, Stern) reports that testing "all incoming hospital patients for" methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) "and isolating those infected did not curtail its spread, and proved costly," according to a study published in the Mar. 12 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Click to read more ...

CDC is requesting that states report all cases of influenza-related pediatric mortality during the 2007-2008 influenza season. This health advisory contains updated information about influenza and bacterial co-infections in children and provides interim testing and treatment recommendations.

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Some antibiotics may be ineffective against acute sinusitis, study indicates. The AP (12/5, Tanner) reports that according to a study published in today's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, "people suffering from facial pain and a runny nose with greenish or yellowish mucus generally improved within about two weeks -- whether they took the standard antibiotic amoxicillin, steroid nose spray [budesonide], or fake medicine." This finding may have important implications for antibiotics, "particularly the penicillin-like drug amoxicillin," which "are among the most commonly prescribed medicines for sinus infections." Dr. Vincenza Snow, a Philadelphia internist and director of clinical programs and quality of care at the American College of Physicians, points out that "while antibiotics are designed to treat bacteria, these drugs aren't always very effective at treating bacterial sinus infections because the medicine has a tough time reaching the sinuses."

Click to read more ...

 From "Emergency Medicine Today", Jan 22 2008

MRSA infection may be linked to single evolving bacterium, study suggests.

HealthDay (1/22, Preidt) reports that, according to a study appearing online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a "single strain of an evolving bacterium has been responsible for most of the community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA) infections." Researchers as the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases "said their findings resolve debate about the molecular evolution of CA-MRSA in the United States and rule out the possibility that multiple strains of USA300 emerged randomly with similar characteristics." After "analyzing the genomes of USA300 collected from 10 patients infected in different parts of the United States between 2002 and 2005," the team found that "[e]ight of the 10 samples had almost identical genomes, indicating they were from a common strain." Moreover, "two of the eight almost identical USA300 samples caused far fewer deaths in laboratory mice than the other samples," which may lend support to "an emerging belief that tiny genetic changes among evolving strains have a major impact on disease severity and the potential for development of drug resistance."