This note from ACSH prompts me to comment.
Methicillin resistant staph (MRSA) have been around a long time, but I am treating less of it.
I have great doubts that failure to wash hands is big factor–it doesn’t go rampaging through hospitals and never did, it comes in on patients and in visitors noses and on their skin.
As for the quinolone resistance, no big surprise, bugs exposed to antibiotics will select out for survival of the resistant bugs.
A serious factor for antibiotic resistance is use of antibiotics adn guess what, its kids that get lots of antibiotics in America.
In Iraq resistant bugs are not common in the native population, but common in the soldier population.
Children could be a reservoir since they get antibiotics for their childhood respiratory illnesses. Health adults get inoculated at gyms and from their kids. Army rate of MRSA is down in my experience. In the jail its down slightly, but I don’t know if that means something.
MRSA is not reported or tracked, and, for example i treat easily dozens of cases in a year, but don’t report them, so this is an untracked problem.
The multi drug resistant super bug from India where people can buy antibiotics over the counter without a prescription is troublesome.
Here’s the news item from ACSH.
http://acsh.org/2014/04/drug-resistant-bacteria-just-hospital-stays/
Have no clue. Would say that native Iraqi population had less MRSA than the military pop.
Selecting out resistant bacteria is going to happen in a population that uses a lot of antibiotics–for example sick people.
Is MRSA more common in Mexico also? I’ve been told you can buy antibiotics over the counter there, too.