Staphylococcus Aureus Part 3

Treatments for staph infections vary greatly by the severity of infection. Less deadly and commonly occurring staph infections can heal without treatment. Boils usually take approximately one half to nearly an entire month to heal on their own, but treatment may speed the process up. Styes will usually heal in about 10 days without treatment. However, if any type of infection worsens or is abnormally swollen, red or painful in any of these situations, you should call your doctor immediately. Guidelines for when to call the doctor about infection can be found on the Staph infections informational page of the teen health website.

“If an area of infection on your body becomes very red, sore or is accompanied by fever or generally ill feeling, call your doctor. You may need antibiotics to treat the infection. A large, pus-filled area may need to be drained by a doctor. Also call your doctor if skin infections seem to be passing from one family member to another or if two or more family members have skin infections at the same time,” (Staph Infections).

For all other, more serious infections, doctors almost always use antibiotics for treatment. However, with rapidly increasing occurrences of MRSA, doctors must be careful about when and how much antibiotic to use. Although there are treatments for staph infections, what type of prevention control exists?

Staphylococcus Aureus Part 4

There are plenty of available sources for finding out the regulation set of basic precautions any person can take to prevent staph infections. Among them are the most basic suggestions found on the staph infections page of the kidshealth.org webpage. They include washing hands regularly, showering daily, practicing good regular hygiene, and keeping all wounds clean and covered until they are fully healed. You should also use any antibiotic medications and topical creams your doctor suggests. In addition, it is wise to only use towels once when you have an infection and then clean them thoroughly in hot water, or use disposable towels. There are also very informative pamphlets in pdf form online in many locations. One of the best webpages for information of prevention and further knowledge of Staph infections is http://www.doh.wa.gov/Topics/Antibiotics/MRSA.htm.

In other parts of the world, there are countries that have had prevention control policies in their hospitals that have been much more successful than the United States. Although Canada’s healthcare system is flawed in many ways by implementing universal healthcare, they have been successful in some areas. Despite Canada’s vast geographical landscape, research has shown that because they focused on prevention of these infections earlier than most countries, they were able to isolate the spread of MRSA infection. According to Jan Verhoef, author of Stopping short the spread of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, the numbers are in Canada’s favor. From 1995 to 1999 there was only a 5% increase in the occurrence of MRSA strains of staph infections in Canadian hospitals. This is amazing considering that the percentage in America in 1999 was 40% and Japan had a staggering 80% occurrence. Clearly it is time for everyone to take more responsibility for these precautionary policies, because the spread of staph infections could be reduced significantly. How have staph infections become so resistant and what research is being done to finally eliminate MRSA and other staph infections as a serious medical condition?

Staphylococcus Aureus Part 5

In the 1950’s when the antibiotic Penicillin was invented, doctors began using antibiotics in excess to heal and treat every bacterial infection, necessary or not. This had serious adverse results. By the 1980’s doctors need to move to stronger antibiotics and the trend of over using antibiotics to treat infections continued until the bacteria become resistant again. After several decades, there are few new stronger antibiotics to be developed, and the world needs to redefine the rules of antibiotic treatments if any improvement is going to be made. Our future is in the research of prevention and complete elimination of the problem.

Researchers are currently examining the complete genomes of known strains of Staph bacteria and other well known bacteria that cause infections. This research will and has already allowed scientists to find specific sequences of code that are reoccurring in all of the strains, as is explained in the article Whole genome sequencing of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. By doing this, scientists can narrow in on the specific section of coding in the MRSA strain that makes it so exceptionally resistant. If this is successful, we can find ways to eliminate the bacteria in new ways. Other research has been done that has shown recently that the use of manmade viruses can be used to remove the bacteria infecting patients, and further research is being done currently. If scientists can create Bacteriophages (bacteria-infecting viruses) that successfully remove all of the bacteria in a human and do nothing more, then the entire way infections are treated would be revolutionized.