Seven years ago, Everly Macario lost her one and a half year old son to an infection she would later learn was methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA. Her story, which she recounts in the Huffington Post, is a tragic recounting of the devastating effects of antibiotic resistant infections and the importance of promoting judicious antibiotic use.
It’s common for investigators to use administrative data to measure and track rates of MRSA infection, but is an administrative database an accurate source for this kind of information? A new paper co-authored by several ETC researchers says no—instead, administrative data may be misleading when it comes to infection surveillance.
About 19,000 people a year die after battling the superbug MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.
Others survive but pay a high price.
That’s what happened to Kerri Cardello, a 39-year-old from Annapolis, Md. Her long fight began on Christmas Day 2003 when she woke up feeling ill. A high, persistent fever sent her to the hospital emergency room, but they sent her home--saying she had the flu.
Cardello just kept getting worse, and on December 30, she woke up struggling to breathe.
This week, Dutch researchers released a study finding that MRSA is often spread by patients moving from one hospital to another. They determined that more stringent screening processes can significantly limit the spread of the antibiotic-resistant disease. The New York Times put together
Yesterday, the Blog of the Interdisciplinary Nursing Quality Research Initiative (INQRI) posted a video interview with ETC Director Ramanan Laxminarayan.
Researchers from the University of Mexico found that applying a simple protein can prevent MRSA from switching from a harmless to virulent form, according to a UPI story this week.
A Slate article argues that we can win the battle against antibiotic resistance by adopting a new strategy:
A study released in JAMA this week found that half of ICU patients worldwide have infections. Check out the Reuters and Health Day articles for more in-depth coverage.
There’s been a good amount of media coverage of the new study by ETC researchers in the December issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases, so we thought we’d share some of it with you.
The following is a guest post from Jo of Head Nurse, who calls it "a simple guide to antibiotic resistance for the liberal arts major."