Shock superbug warning in America

Flesh-eating bacteria cases, fatal pneumonia and life-threatening heart infections suddenly are popping up around the US, striking healthy people and stunning their doctors.

The cause? Staph, a bacteria better known for causing skin boils which used to be easily treated with standard antibiotic pills.

No more, say infectious disease experts, who increasingly are seeing these “superbugs” – strains of Staphylococcus aureus – unfazed by the entire penicillin family and other first-line drugs.

Until a few years ago, these drug-resistant infections were unheard of except in hospital patients, prison inmates and the chronically ill. Now, resistant strains are infecting healthy children, athletes and others with no connection to a hospital.

“This is a new bug,” said Dr John Bartlett, who chairs the committee on antibiotic resistance at the Infectious Diseases Society of America. “It’s a different strain than in the hospital … more dangerous than other staph.

“Primary care physicians and ER doctors, they don’t all know about this, and they should,” he said.

Bartlett, a professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, treated three young Baltimore area women this year who got pneumonia from this community-acquired resistant staph. All had to be put on breathing machines, and one died, he said.

The infections will be a hot topic at the society’s annual meeting this week in Boston. The group has been warning that drug companies aren’t developing enough new antibiotics to avert a crisis.

Among the case reports to be discussed:

:: In Los Angeles, doctors at UCLA Medical Center treated 14 people with necrotizing fasciitis, informally known as ”flesh-eating bacteria,” over a 14-month stretch through April. Three needed reconstructive surgery and 10 spent time in intensive care.

“This is about as serious an infectious disease emergency as you can get,” said Dr. Loren G. Miller.

“We don’t know how these people got the infection - there doesn’t seem to be a common thread.”

:: In Corpus Christi, Texas, doctors at Driscoll Children’s Hospital saw fewer than 10 cases a year of community-acquired resistant staph infections in the 1990s, then saw 459 in 2003, with 90% in healthy children. Half were admitted to the hospital to get intravenous antibiotics, and a few developed life-threatening lung and heart infections or toxic shock syndrome.

:: A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study shows another new twist: The resistant staph strain caused pneumonia in 17 people, killing five, during last year’s flu season. Only one had any risk factors for the infection.