MRSA and the Food Connection

Posted on November 17, 2007 by MRSA Attorney

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) (usually pronounced in short as "Mursa" or spelled out as MRSA), is a bacterium responsible for some difficult-to-treat infections in humans. 

Heather Moore, senior writer for PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), wrote a concerning Op-ed on MRSA and its relationship with antibiotics fed to animals titled “Your supper & superbugs” . 

Here are some of the more worrisome points:

  • Approximately 70 percent of the antibiotics used in the United States aren't given to human patients -- they are fed to farmed animals. The filthy, crowded conditions on factory farms are breeding grounds for disease.
  • One USDA study showed that 66 percent of beef samples were contaminated with antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and scientists at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have reported that 96 percent of the chicken flesh they tested was contaminated with antibiotic-resistant campylobacter bacteria.
  • Another study conducted by the CDC indicated that chicken sold in supermarkets is often tainted with potentially fatal bacteria called Enterococcus faecium. This bacterium was not even affected by Synercid, a drug commonly used to treat antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
  • A recent Belgian survey showed that MRSA has been found in 68 percent of the pig farms in that country. In 37 percent of the cases, the farmer and the farmer's family carried pig MRSA -- a variant of human MRSA.
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Does MRSA come from animals?

Posted on November 9, 2007 by MRSA Lawyer

Salon.com features an interesting article about Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus that focuses on the origins of MRSA and how it is spreading to humans.  Following is an excerpt from the article:

"Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, also known as MRSA -- or, in the parlance of New York tabloids, "super staph" -- is an antibiotic-resistant version of one of the bacteria collectively known as staph. Staph, which can cause everything from skin infections to more life-threatening diseases, usually attacks older hospital patients who develop infections after surgery. The newer, often more virulent strains collectively known as CA-MRSA (community-acquired MRSA) have been all over the news in the past few weeks, as they affect people younger and healthier than the usual targets. A recent study suggested that MRSA infection was responsible for almost 19,000 deaths in the United States last year -- more than AIDS -- including the very public deaths of children and adolescents in Virginia, New York and elsewhere. Public health officials have tried to quiet fears, but the problem could get worse. MRSA remains treatable with a number of different antibiotics, but there are already signs that resistance to some of those drugs might be just around the corner.

Recently, something about MRSA -- and its epidemiology -- has been changing in ways that suggest that those changes could be taking place among livestock. Traditionally considered a disease picked up in hospitals, MRSA is now being seen more and more often in the community. And it doesn't appear that the hospital-acquired strains have just left the hospital and gone feral. The community-acquired strains of MRSA are genetically different. They're new. And though there is as of yet no definitive proof identifying livestock as the source of the major new MRSA strains, there is a growing body of evidence that suggests animals are, at minimum, reservoirs for other new strains now infecting humans.

Those studies done to date in Europe and Canada on MRSA give some credence to the involvement of livestock in MRSA's mutation. Hospitals in the Netherlands, for example, have had fantastic success at controlling MRSA. They employ a "search and destroy" policy, using aggressive screening, strict infection-control procedures, and severe restrictions on the quantity of antibiotics dispensed. They have managed to keep MRSA rates far below those in the rest of Europe. Dutch rates are so low, in fact, that Dutch hospitals list a previous visit to a foreign hospital as an MRSA risk factor.

Read the full article here.

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