This germ is freaking scary. Urban horror has nothing on this.

[gategrrl]

 MRSA staph germ worse than AIDS virus in number of deaths. And that's only the tip of the iceberg.

Comments

[amycooper.livejournal.com]

I would want to know more before jumping to conclusions. If there was an epidemic to that kind of proportions, I think it would have hit the news long before now. I'm gonna hunt down that issue of JAMA and read that first. I generally trust NPR, but this seems absurd in its numbers.

Currently NYS (where I live) does have some out breaks of bacteria-resistant staph infections. Staph infections are somewhat common and the non-drug resistant are pretty treatable. Generally the bacteria-resistant are not lethal, though they is a higher risk of fatality to them.

Also, it isn't an easily spreadable disease.

While drug resistant strains for bacteria is a growing problem and this is alarming in that sense, this sounds wrong to me. As I said, I'm going to hunt down that issue of JAMA now.

[aizjanika.livejournal.com]

I think they're just repeating what's out there. I have no clue if it's true or not or if all the news outlets are just repeating the same story, but I found the same figures at the CDC and at another government site. I have no idea how many people die from AIDS, so I don't know about that comment.

From the CDC:

The estimated number of people developing a serious MRSA infection (i.e., invasive) in 2005 was about 94,360; this is higher than estimates using other methods.

Approximately 18,650 persons died during a hospital stay related to these serious MRSA infections.

Medline Plus

In fact, MRSA infections account for almost 19,000 deaths and more than 94,000 life-threatening illnesses each year in the United States.

Mayo Clinic

[szeretni.livejournal.com]

I've heard about this, or at least something similar and it's really scary.

[aizjanika.livejournal.com]

This is scary. My daughter got a notice under her dorm room door the other day that there's an epidemic of this at her school. I've been reading up about it because of that, and, yeah, it's pretty scary.

What I read in other news articles is that they are discovering these staph infections in places where you wouldn't expect it--in healthy children or even under the skin where it's not visible, so doctors don't always know what they're treating.

[aizjanika.livejournal.com]

My daughter told me "epidemic," but it could be that "outbreak" is a more accurate term. *g* I didn't see the paper myself.