WASHINGTON — A dangerous germ that has been spreading around the country causes more life-threatening infections than public-health authorities had thought and is killing more people in the United States each year than the AIDS virus, federal health officials reported Tuesday.
The microbe, a strain of a once-innocuous staph bacterium that has become invulnerable to first-line antibiotics, is responsible for more than 94,000 serious infections and nearly 19,000 deaths each year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calculated.
Although evidence has been mounting that the infection is becoming more common, the estimate published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association marks the first national assessment of the toll from the insidious pathogen, officials said.
“This is the first study that’s been able to capture the data in a comprehensive fashion,” said Scott Fridkin, a medical epidemiologist at the CDC. “This is a significant public-health problem. We should be very worried.”
Other researchers noted that the estimate includes only the most serious infections caused by the bug, known as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA.
“It’s really just the tip of the iceberg,” said Elizabeth Bancroft, a medical epidemiologist at the Los Angeles Department of Public Health who wrote an editorial accompanying the new research. “It is astounding.”
On Monday, a Lynch Station, Va., teenager, Ashton Bonds, 17, succumbed to MRSA, prompting officials to shut down 21 Bedford County schools for cleaning to prevent further infections. The infection had spread to Bonds’ kidneys, liver, lungs and the muscle around his heart.
The MRSA estimate is being published with a report that a strain of another bacterium, which causes ear infections in children, has become impervious to every approved antibiotic for youngsters.
“Taken together, what these two papers show is that we’re increasingly facing antibiotic-resistant forms of these very common organisms,” Bancroft said.
The reports underscore the need to develop new antibiotics and curb the unnecessary use of those already available, experts said. They should also alert doctors to be on the lookout for antibiotic-resistant infections so patients can be treated with the few remaining effective drugs before they develop serious complications, experts said.
MRSA is a strain of the ubiquitous bacterium that usually causes “staph” infections that are easily treated with common antibiotics in the penicillin family, such as methicillin and amoxicillin. Resistant strains of the organism, however, have been increasingly turning up in hospitals and in small outbreaks outside of health-care settings, such as among athletes, prison inmates and children.
The germ, which is spread by casual contact, rapidly turns minor abscesses and other skin infections into serious health problems. In some cases, the microbe gets into the lungs, causing unusually serious pneumonia, or spreads into bone, vital organs and the bloodstream, triggering life- threatening complications.
In the new study, Fridkin and his colleagues analyzed data collected in nine regions or metro areas, including Denver; Atlanta; Baltimore; Davidson County, Tenn.; Monroe County, N.Y.; Portland, Ore.; Ramsey County, Minn.; and San Francisco. They identified 5,287 cases of invasive MRSA infection and 988 deaths in 2005.
“These are some of the most dreaded invasive bacterial diseases out there,” Bancroft said. “This is clearly a very big deal.”
Recognition, prevention
The methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infection sometimes first appears on the skin as a red, swollen pimple or boil that may be painful or contain pus. It can be spread by skin-to-skin contact or by touching surfaces contaminated with the germ. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises:
Source: The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
