Word: staphylococcus
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...illnesses that can be picked up in the hospital, a staphylococcus infection is surely the most fearsome. The stealthy bacterium snakes along intravenous lines or seeps into surgical wounds, destroying skin and bones, poisoning blood, threatening death. For years it could be stopped by penicillin. Then it slowly became resistant to one antibiotic after another until finally only one, vancomycin, remained to subdue all staph strains. Now comes word that even that microbial barrier is falling...
...ATLANTA: Staphylococcus, the bacterium responsible for most hospital-acquired infections, is rapidly becoming resistant to the antibiotic which has kept it in check for decades, the Centers for Disease Control confirmed Wednesday. The development, first reported by the Dallas Morning News, may leave doctors without an adequate way to kill the organism and could eventually lead to an unstoppable wave of deadly infections in hospitals. First discovered in Japan, the new strain showed an "intermediate" level of resistance to the antibiotic vancomycin, which has been used worldwide to fight off Staphylococcus and other stubborn types of bacteria for the past...
...past few years. And in a sobering series of articles in the current Science magazine, researchers point out that the problem of drug resistance is not limited to a few germs but spans an entire spectrum of disease-causing microbes, including those responsible for gonorrhea, meningitis, streptococcal pneumonia and staphylococcus infections. "Bacteria are cleverer than men," says Dr. Harold Neu of Columbia University's medical school...
...guiding principle of standard infection control is to act as if everyone and everything is infected with something -- whether it be Staphylococcus bacteria, tetanus toxins or the AIDS virus. That is why instruments should be sterilized in an autoclave, physicians should change gloves or wash hands between patients, and disposable swabs, syringes and other items should not be reused. Although the CDC's disease detectives are still not sure what went wrong in Acer's office, they are zeroing in on just such a breach in infection control...