With all the concern about serious infectious diseases that get a lot of press a mundane organism appears to silently gaining momentum. Methicillin Resistant Staph Aureus (MRSA) has apparently escaped from the hospital environment to get loose in the general population. The news today is that some experts think it may be 10x more common than previously thought. This is grim news, but no surprise to this correspondent. I see many suspicious cases in patients who walk into my clinic now. For that matter I think I have had more than one bout myself in the past year.

We have gotten so used to blasting bacteria with antibiotic that this MRSA bug is going to bring back the pre-antibiotic era to some degree. Indiscriminent use of antibiotics for conditions they do not help is a big problem in the US. It is a much bigger problem overseas where they are sold over-the-counter. Mexican and Thai citizens who treat their colds with ampicillin are actually doing harm by breeding resistant bugs – like the MRSA now vexing us.

The great scandal out of all of this is that factory farms in the us add it to animal feed to help control the diseases that might spread in overcrowded conditions. Not as needed BTW, but routinely. For reasons not well understood it seems to help growth. So never mind the fact that such animals are being converted to antibiotic resistant bacteria production facilities which are pooping out potentially dangerous organisms on a collossal scale corporate america is only viewing the bottom line – theirs.About two thirds of antibiotics used in the US go into animal feed. This needs to stop!

Is this contributing to the MRSA epidemic? I don’t think anyone knows at present, but I hope public health authorities are running down the possibility. If they don’t look then they for sure will not find any connection. This would be exactly the kind of science we have come to expect from the Bush administration.Methicillin-Resistant Staph Aureus (MRSA)