CDC Reports on Drug-Resistant Staph
01:10 AM ET 08/20/99
CDC Reports on Drug-Resistant Staph
ATLANTA (AP) _ Federal health officials have confirmed the
deaths of four Midwestern children linked to drug-resistant staph
infections they acquired outside a hospital setting.
Drug-resistant staph was once largely confined to hospitals and
nursing homes, but the children's deaths in Minnesota and North
Dakota show it may be spreading to communities, the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday.
''These are the first deaths we're aware of that have appeared
in the United States and in medical literature,'' said Dr. J. Todd
Weber of the CDC's National Center for Infectious Diseases. ''How
rare or how common it is, we don't know yet.''
The children, ages 1 to 13, acquired methicillin-resistant
staphylococcus aureus infections between 1997 and 1999. None of the
children had been recently hospitalized before their deaths, the
CDC said.
Staph bacteria are the No. 1 cause of hospital-acquired
infections in the United States, blamed for 13 percent of the 2
million hospital infections annually.
Half of staph bacteria infections contracted by hospital
patients in 1997 were resistant to a large class of antibiotics, up
from 1974, when only 2 percent were drug-resistant, the CDC said.
Doctors recently have seen an increase in drug-resistant
infections acquired outside of hospitals although CDC researchers
said they don't know yet to what extent.
''The resistant bacteria have been around 30 years but these
four cases suggest it may be getting into the general population,''
said Dr. Timothy Naimi, a medical epidemiologists with the CDC.
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