Health
Studies find more community-acquired drug-resistant infections
NEWS IN BRIEF — Posted Oct. 18, 2004
Physicians are seeing more infections acquired outside of the hospital setting that are impervious to antibiotics, according to two studies presented at this month's annual meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America in Boston.
"This crisis has the potential to touch us all because drug-resistant infections can strike anyone -- young or old, healthy or chronically ill," said Joseph R. Dalovisio, MD, IDSA president.
One study found that the number of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infections caught by children in the community and treated at one hospital in Corpus Christi, Texas increased from nine in 1999 to 459 in 2003. Another study out of Los Angeles found that 14 cases of necrotizing fascitis could be blamed on the bug, and this was a new clinical entity.
"This is about as serious an infectious disease emergency as you can get," said Loren G. Miller, MD, MPH, lead author of the Los Angeles study and assistant professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Note: This item originally appeared at http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2004/10/18/hlbf1018.htm.
