What is VISA?
Staphylococcus aureus, often referred to simply as "staph," is a bacteria commonly found on the skin and in the nose of healthy people. Occasionally, staphylococci can get into the body and cause an infection. This infection can be minor (such as pimples, boils, and other skin conditions) or serious and sometimes fatal (such as blood infections or pneumonia).
MRSA are staphylococci that are resistant to methicillin and other commonly used antibiotics and they have a unique gene that produces resistance. Therefore, alternate antibiotics must be used to treat MRSA. Vancomycin has been the most effective and reliable drug in these cases.
VISA are not susceptible to vancomycin. Therefore, vancomycin treatment is not reliable for treating these infections. However, to date, all VISA isolates have been susceptible to other Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved antimicrobial drugs.
VRSA (vancomycin-resistant S. aureus) are resistant to vancomycin. These organisms have not yet been found in nature but might emerge from VISA. Vancomycin would not be effective at all for treating these infections.
How can the spread of VISA be prevented?
Use of infection control practices (such as wearing gloves before and after contact with infectious body tissues and proper handwashing) can reduce the spread of VISA.
Appropriate use of antibiotics (i.e., use only when needed to treat bacterial infections [and avoid overuse]) will reduce the emergence of resistance strains.
What is being done to prevent and control the spread of VISA?
Programs have been established to promote appropriate use of antimicrobials, especially vancomycin, in all healthcare settings, based on CDC’s, "Recommendations for Preventing the Spread of Vancomycin Resistance."
CDC and state and local health agencies have implemented a special project to detect and evaluate strains of MRSA that might be VISA. When such a strain is detected, special infection control precautions are implemented to isolate the patient and prevent spread to others.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
How to Prevent MRSA and VRE
Prevention
MRSA infections are spread by close skin to skin contact with a person with MRSA infection or colonization or by coming into direct contact with a surface or item contaminated with MRSA (such as wound dressings, towels or linens).
Standard Precautions should be used to help prevent the spread of MRSA in the healthcare setting.
Clean hands with an antimicrobial soap or alcohol-based hand rub before and after each patient, even if gloves have been worn.
Wear gloves when examining infected areas and appropriately dispose of gloves after use.
Properly dispose of all dressings contaminated with drainage from the infected site.
Clean surfaces and equipment in the exam or hospital room that may have been contaminated by the patient with a commercial disinfectant or with a 1:100 bleach and water solution.
Launder all linens that come into contact with drainage or secretions from the infected site in hot water and dry with a high dryer setting as the heat will help to kill any bacteria still present after the wash.
Stay away from Hospitals as much as possible. Dont take your young babies into the hospital setting to visit ill relatives. Exposing them to the germs in a hospital can be deadly.
MRSA infections are spread by close skin to skin contact with a person with MRSA infection or colonization or by coming into direct contact with a surface or item contaminated with MRSA (such as wound dressings, towels or linens).
Standard Precautions should be used to help prevent the spread of MRSA in the healthcare setting.
Clean hands with an antimicrobial soap or alcohol-based hand rub before and after each patient, even if gloves have been worn.
Wear gloves when examining infected areas and appropriately dispose of gloves after use.
Properly dispose of all dressings contaminated with drainage from the infected site.
Clean surfaces and equipment in the exam or hospital room that may have been contaminated by the patient with a commercial disinfectant or with a 1:100 bleach and water solution.
Launder all linens that come into contact with drainage or secretions from the infected site in hot water and dry with a high dryer setting as the heat will help to kill any bacteria still present after the wash.
Stay away from Hospitals as much as possible. Dont take your young babies into the hospital setting to visit ill relatives. Exposing them to the germs in a hospital can be deadly.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Flesh Eating Bacteria strain of MRSA spreading
The MRSA superbug is invading homes, schools and gyms, scientists have warned.
The strain found in the community is a particular threat to young, healthy people.
It spreads more easily than the one in hospitals and, unlike normal MRSA, it produces a flesh-eating poison.
This week's New Scientist magazine warns: "We hear a lot about antibiotic-resistant bacteria in hospitals, but the truth is that a frightening range of superbugs are lurking just about everywhere.
"They skulk around our homes, schools and at the local gym."
Robert Daum, a pediatrician at the University of Chicago's Children's Hospital and one of the first to warn of the dangers of community-acquired MRSA, said: "Everywhere it has come it has stayed and it comes to more and more places every day."
The bug is passed on through close contact and can be caught from dirty sheets, sharing towels in gyms and sharing sports kits. Symptoms range from painful boils to fatal blood poisoning.
Patients can die within 24 hours of the bug spreading to their lungs due to a form of pneumonia in which the flesh is rapidly eaten away by a poison produced by the bacteria.
While antibiotic treatment exists, the drugs need to be given early for maximum effect.
The bug has recently made its way into British hospitals, killing two patients at the University Hospital of North Staffordshire in Stoke-on-Trent last year.
Some hospitals already screen patients due to undergo operations for MRSA, but some doctors now want all patients, and even people visiting the Emergency Room, to be screened for the infection.
Professor Richard James, of the Centre for Healthcare Associated Infections at Nottingham University, said this would save hospitals money in the long-term.
The potential loss of earnings should community MRSA spread would "dwarf" the extra costs of screening to the NHS.
In Scandinavia, the battle against MRSA has already been taken into the community, with nurses sent to people's homes to treat carriers and teach them about hygiene.
Educating people about handwashing and not sharing towels has led to a drop in infections.
Danish MRSA expert Dr Robert Skov said: "If you don't fight MRSA in the community you will have a silent pool who are continuously spreading it to other people.
"Just by instructing people you can get quite far."
In Britain, the Health Protection Agency says the risk of infection with community-acquired MRSA is small, but people should make sure all cuts and grazes are properly cleaned and covered, avoid sharing towels and toothbrushes and ensure any gym they use is cleaned thoroughly.
The strain found in the community is a particular threat to young, healthy people.
It spreads more easily than the one in hospitals and, unlike normal MRSA, it produces a flesh-eating poison.
This week's New Scientist magazine warns: "We hear a lot about antibiotic-resistant bacteria in hospitals, but the truth is that a frightening range of superbugs are lurking just about everywhere.
"They skulk around our homes, schools and at the local gym."
Robert Daum, a pediatrician at the University of Chicago's Children's Hospital and one of the first to warn of the dangers of community-acquired MRSA, said: "Everywhere it has come it has stayed and it comes to more and more places every day."
The bug is passed on through close contact and can be caught from dirty sheets, sharing towels in gyms and sharing sports kits. Symptoms range from painful boils to fatal blood poisoning.
Patients can die within 24 hours of the bug spreading to their lungs due to a form of pneumonia in which the flesh is rapidly eaten away by a poison produced by the bacteria.
While antibiotic treatment exists, the drugs need to be given early for maximum effect.
The bug has recently made its way into British hospitals, killing two patients at the University Hospital of North Staffordshire in Stoke-on-Trent last year.
Some hospitals already screen patients due to undergo operations for MRSA, but some doctors now want all patients, and even people visiting the Emergency Room, to be screened for the infection.
Professor Richard James, of the Centre for Healthcare Associated Infections at Nottingham University, said this would save hospitals money in the long-term.
The potential loss of earnings should community MRSA spread would "dwarf" the extra costs of screening to the NHS.
In Scandinavia, the battle against MRSA has already been taken into the community, with nurses sent to people's homes to treat carriers and teach them about hygiene.
Educating people about handwashing and not sharing towels has led to a drop in infections.
Danish MRSA expert Dr Robert Skov said: "If you don't fight MRSA in the community you will have a silent pool who are continuously spreading it to other people.
"Just by instructing people you can get quite far."
In Britain, the Health Protection Agency says the risk of infection with community-acquired MRSA is small, but people should make sure all cuts and grazes are properly cleaned and covered, avoid sharing towels and toothbrushes and ensure any gym they use is cleaned thoroughly.
Vitamin D may help with MRSA and Super Infections
As we are all being subjected to a seemingly endless stream of political rhetoric, most of what we hear about health care is all negative. Are you ready for some good, maybe even sensationally good news? - Michael D. Shaw, Contributing Columnist - HealthNewsDigest.comI'm talking about Vitamin D (specifically D3), and its newfound properties of immune enhancement..
While the introduction of pharmaceutical antibiotics in 1941 (with Penicillin) was a huge boon, it would take less than four decades for their indiscriminate use to cause the problem of germ resistance.
As such, with the looming prospects of bio-terror, and such naturally occurring threats as Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), research has been directed towards various methods of strengthening our immune systems.Natural immunity is not prone to creating resistant strains of pathogens, of course, and if a single means of enhancing immunity could be deployed, this would be far more efficient and effective than attempting to distribute a single-purpose drug for a suspected bio-terror agent.
In the early 1990s, a particular class of so-called host defense peptides was identified, which is remarkably effective against a wide variety of pathogens. They are called cathelicidins, and have been found in many mammals, including humans.In September, 2004, a research group based in Montreal, Canada found that Vitamin D stimulates the production of human cathelicidin (hCAP-18), and thus directly regulates antimicrobial innate immune responses. More recent findings (April, 2007) from Dr. Gill Diamond et al., of the University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey, show that Vitamin D induces the production of cathelicidin in normal human bronchial epithelial cells.Immunologists have long observed that our natural immunity can vary tremendously across populations, but could never explain why. Could differing levels of Vitamin D be the answer?A Finnish study—published this month—indicates a strong correlation between vitamin D insufficiency and acute respiratory tract infection.Ironically, Vitamin D was used to treat tuberculosis in the pre-antibiotic era, and it was often noticed that children suffering from rickets (caused by a Vitamin D deficiency) were prone to chronic infections.
Physicians in India note that Vitamin D deficiency in tuberculosis is a cause, rather than a symptom of the disease.In 1981, R. Edgar Hope-Simpson (famed for proving that shingles was caused by reactivation of the chickenpox virus) proposed that a "seasonal stimulus" intimately associated with solar radiation explained the remarkable seasonality of epidemic influenza. In a widely cited review article entitled Epidemic influenza and vitamin D, Dr. John J. Cannell et al., concluded that vitamin D, or lack of it, may be Hope-Simpson's "seasonal stimulus," as people tend to get less sunlight in the winter, and sunlight promotes Vitamin D synthesis in the body.Cannell has even suggested that the skyrocketing rates of autism since the 1980s may be tied into lack of sun exposure, in the wake of sometimes hysterical public campaigns discouraging being out in the sun. Certainly, epidemiological sorting of autism incidence by latitude whereby equatorial peoples tend to get more sun, would be beneficial here, but has not yet been done.The most striking findings on Vitamin D concern cancer.
Results published in June, 2007 from Creighton University looked at 1,179 postmenopausal Caucasian women over 55, some of whom were put on Vitamin D and calcium supplements. The supplement group had 60-77 percent fewer incidences of cancer over the four years of the study than the control group.Cedric F. Garland, Dr.P.H., cancer prevention specialist at the Moores Cancer Center at the University of California, San Diego and colleagues estimate that 250,000 cases of colorectal cancer and 350,000 cases of breast cancer could be prevented worldwide by increasing intake of vitamin D, particularly in countries north of the equator.
That such an inexpensive supplement could have such profound effects is welcome news in light of the American Cancer Society's new emphasis on health care access as "key to winning the war against cancer."
The old bromide of early detection is trotted out, as is the implication that lack of insurance might impede early detection. Does this mean, as health care maverick Bill Sardi suggests, that the Society has given up on this notion of "prevention," since cancer rates have probably only dropped because of lifestyle improvements, and not medical intervention?As I have stated on more than one occasion, early detection and its relation to survival longevity rate is merely a statistical aberration. Since the survival longevity is dated from the time of first detection of the cancer, BY DEFINITION early detection means you will live longer, regardless of treatment!To this baby boomer, at least, the Vitamin D connection looks wonderful, and should be more aggressively pursued.
While the introduction of pharmaceutical antibiotics in 1941 (with Penicillin) was a huge boon, it would take less than four decades for their indiscriminate use to cause the problem of germ resistance.
As such, with the looming prospects of bio-terror, and such naturally occurring threats as Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), research has been directed towards various methods of strengthening our immune systems.Natural immunity is not prone to creating resistant strains of pathogens, of course, and if a single means of enhancing immunity could be deployed, this would be far more efficient and effective than attempting to distribute a single-purpose drug for a suspected bio-terror agent.
In the early 1990s, a particular class of so-called host defense peptides was identified, which is remarkably effective against a wide variety of pathogens. They are called cathelicidins, and have been found in many mammals, including humans.In September, 2004, a research group based in Montreal, Canada found that Vitamin D stimulates the production of human cathelicidin (hCAP-18), and thus directly regulates antimicrobial innate immune responses. More recent findings (April, 2007) from Dr. Gill Diamond et al., of the University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey, show that Vitamin D induces the production of cathelicidin in normal human bronchial epithelial cells.Immunologists have long observed that our natural immunity can vary tremendously across populations, but could never explain why. Could differing levels of Vitamin D be the answer?A Finnish study—published this month—indicates a strong correlation between vitamin D insufficiency and acute respiratory tract infection.Ironically, Vitamin D was used to treat tuberculosis in the pre-antibiotic era, and it was often noticed that children suffering from rickets (caused by a Vitamin D deficiency) were prone to chronic infections.
Physicians in India note that Vitamin D deficiency in tuberculosis is a cause, rather than a symptom of the disease.In 1981, R. Edgar Hope-Simpson (famed for proving that shingles was caused by reactivation of the chickenpox virus) proposed that a "seasonal stimulus" intimately associated with solar radiation explained the remarkable seasonality of epidemic influenza. In a widely cited review article entitled Epidemic influenza and vitamin D, Dr. John J. Cannell et al., concluded that vitamin D, or lack of it, may be Hope-Simpson's "seasonal stimulus," as people tend to get less sunlight in the winter, and sunlight promotes Vitamin D synthesis in the body.Cannell has even suggested that the skyrocketing rates of autism since the 1980s may be tied into lack of sun exposure, in the wake of sometimes hysterical public campaigns discouraging being out in the sun. Certainly, epidemiological sorting of autism incidence by latitude whereby equatorial peoples tend to get more sun, would be beneficial here, but has not yet been done.The most striking findings on Vitamin D concern cancer.
Results published in June, 2007 from Creighton University looked at 1,179 postmenopausal Caucasian women over 55, some of whom were put on Vitamin D and calcium supplements. The supplement group had 60-77 percent fewer incidences of cancer over the four years of the study than the control group.Cedric F. Garland, Dr.P.H., cancer prevention specialist at the Moores Cancer Center at the University of California, San Diego and colleagues estimate that 250,000 cases of colorectal cancer and 350,000 cases of breast cancer could be prevented worldwide by increasing intake of vitamin D, particularly in countries north of the equator.
That such an inexpensive supplement could have such profound effects is welcome news in light of the American Cancer Society's new emphasis on health care access as "key to winning the war against cancer."
The old bromide of early detection is trotted out, as is the implication that lack of insurance might impede early detection. Does this mean, as health care maverick Bill Sardi suggests, that the Society has given up on this notion of "prevention," since cancer rates have probably only dropped because of lifestyle improvements, and not medical intervention?As I have stated on more than one occasion, early detection and its relation to survival longevity rate is merely a statistical aberration. Since the survival longevity is dated from the time of first detection of the cancer, BY DEFINITION early detection means you will live longer, regardless of treatment!To this baby boomer, at least, the Vitamin D connection looks wonderful, and should be more aggressively pursued.
MRSA outbreak in Prison, near epidemic level
MRSA Outbreak
An emergency exists in that a deadly strain of MRSA is traveling throughout the prison and jail system at an alarming rate and little or nothing is being done about it. Not only has CCPOA, the prison guard’s union, filed a lawsuit about it infecting 13 guards at Old Folsom Prison, but the California Nurses, Fire Department and others are up in arms about the risks to their employees on high alert. We cannot for the life of us comprehend how something this important, on a level with meningitis, known to be spreading throughout Old Folsom since April, didn’t surface in the media until last week.
It spreads like wildfire through handshaking or any type of physical contact, on surfaces such as light switches, door knobs, fibers such as clothing and bedding, even curtains. At least 8500 cases have been reported at the Los Angeles County jail since I first started mentioning this type of staph, which is an antibiotic-resistant bacteria. As these prisoners have been moved to the various institutions, the disease has spread to workers and inmates, to their families who visit and out into the community through the guards and medical workers. It is the one time when everyone at risk is united in agreement that this is a crisis which deserves to be a top priority with all those posturing concern for medical care.
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) often joins the UNION in solidarity, especially for the reasons around this rally, and as were leaving at about 1:45 PM a number of them in their classic purple shirts showed up. However, their late arrival yesterday should not be a measure of how frequently some of the SEIU members work with us behind the scenes, the many phone calls being made to share information, and the cooperation between our UNION and theirs in working to get anti-bacterial cleaners to prisoners.
You heard me right folks.
In spite of many epidemics such as MRSA, filth diseases such as the Norovirus and many others raging throughout these disease hotboxes, the prisoners are not allowed bacterial cleaners. Their laundry is not washed and dried properly, crammed into washers and dryers and coming back full or urine, it’s a sanitation crisis that Sillen has acknowledged but so far, no program of prevention or educating the prisoners of what is taking place has been instituted that we can see.
This summary of MRSA was translated by a hospital administrator who is a hardworking member of our UNION living in the Netherlands where there quick response to outbreaks and vigilance makes them a world leader in low incidence of infectious disease in institutions. Please mail it into at least one prisoner and to prison or jail warden in at least one of the prisons and jails before its spread into the community results in more deaths, a quarantine which means no visits and refusal of medical workers to enter infected prisons. One person lost a finger from MRSA, another person told me that they had to have it dug out of their eye. MRSA is a flesh-eating bacteria which cannot be cured in many cases. Do the mailing and pass this word widely as we need to educate ourselves and others when the Government refuses to do it.
Print off and mail this page to at least one prisoner so they can have a prayer to save themselves from this dreadful,ofen incurable, flesh-eating bacteria
An emergency exists in that a deadly strain of MRSA is traveling throughout the prison and jail system at an alarming rate and little or nothing is being done about it. Not only has CCPOA, the prison guard’s union, filed a lawsuit about it infecting 13 guards at Old Folsom Prison, but the California Nurses, Fire Department and others are up in arms about the risks to their employees on high alert. We cannot for the life of us comprehend how something this important, on a level with meningitis, known to be spreading throughout Old Folsom since April, didn’t surface in the media until last week.
It spreads like wildfire through handshaking or any type of physical contact, on surfaces such as light switches, door knobs, fibers such as clothing and bedding, even curtains. At least 8500 cases have been reported at the Los Angeles County jail since I first started mentioning this type of staph, which is an antibiotic-resistant bacteria. As these prisoners have been moved to the various institutions, the disease has spread to workers and inmates, to their families who visit and out into the community through the guards and medical workers. It is the one time when everyone at risk is united in agreement that this is a crisis which deserves to be a top priority with all those posturing concern for medical care.
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) often joins the UNION in solidarity, especially for the reasons around this rally, and as were leaving at about 1:45 PM a number of them in their classic purple shirts showed up. However, their late arrival yesterday should not be a measure of how frequently some of the SEIU members work with us behind the scenes, the many phone calls being made to share information, and the cooperation between our UNION and theirs in working to get anti-bacterial cleaners to prisoners.
You heard me right folks.
In spite of many epidemics such as MRSA, filth diseases such as the Norovirus and many others raging throughout these disease hotboxes, the prisoners are not allowed bacterial cleaners. Their laundry is not washed and dried properly, crammed into washers and dryers and coming back full or urine, it’s a sanitation crisis that Sillen has acknowledged but so far, no program of prevention or educating the prisoners of what is taking place has been instituted that we can see.
This summary of MRSA was translated by a hospital administrator who is a hardworking member of our UNION living in the Netherlands where there quick response to outbreaks and vigilance makes them a world leader in low incidence of infectious disease in institutions. Please mail it into at least one prisoner and to prison or jail warden in at least one of the prisons and jails before its spread into the community results in more deaths, a quarantine which means no visits and refusal of medical workers to enter infected prisons. One person lost a finger from MRSA, another person told me that they had to have it dug out of their eye. MRSA is a flesh-eating bacteria which cannot be cured in many cases. Do the mailing and pass this word widely as we need to educate ourselves and others when the Government refuses to do it.
Print off and mail this page to at least one prisoner so they can have a prayer to save themselves from this dreadful,ofen incurable, flesh-eating bacteria
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