Pestilence

Wed Jun 28, 2006 7:07 pm (PST)
<http://www.cbc.ca/cp/health/060627/x062730.html> Dangerous superbug taking off in Canada, moving beyond high-risk groups
18:51:59 EDT Jun 27, 2006
HELEN BRANSWELLTORONTO (CP) - A dangerous strain of a superbug that can be caught outside hospital settings has moved beyond the boundaries of the high-risk groups it first plagued in Canada, causing illness in healthy adults and children in a number of provinces across the country, researchers reported Tuesday. In a special series of articles, rushed to print by the Canadian Medical Association Journal, they reported on the spread of the strain ofmethicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus called USA300, which can cause severe illness and occasionally even death in previously healthy individuals. "It's sweeping across the nation, no doubt about it," said Dr. John Conly,senior author of one of the papers and a leading researcher on the scope of Canada's problem with community-acquired MRSA. "I think this is a pan-Canadian problem." Historically, antibiotic-resistant strains of Staph aureus were infections caught in hospitals, where the heavy use of antibiotics has allowed a variety of drug-resistant bacteria to flourish. But over the last decade or so, U.S. researchers have reported the troubling emergence of a couple of strains of MRSA that seem to have developed in the community, in people who hadn't been hospitalized. Often the superbugs cause only hard-to-treat skin and soft-tissue infections, weeping wounds that will not heal. But in some cases, the bugs invade the lungs, causing life-threatening pneumonias. Some groups in the community have been known to be at high risk - the homeless or residents of homeless shelters, intravenous drug users, crack cocaine smokers and prison inmates. But in the United States, where the problem is more advanced than it has been to date in Canada, infections have been cropping up in day-care centres and on sports teams, both professional and amateur. Conly, chair of the Canadian Committee on Antibiotic Resistance, said Calgary has already seen 300-plus cases of community-acquired MRSA,including four or five deaths. And while that city's outbreak seemed to predate others in the country,communities in southwestern British Columbia, Saskatchewan and beyond are seeing an upswing in cases, he said. But Conly worries Canadian physicians may still not recognize the problem,believing community-acquired MRSA is still rare in Canada. "I think it's under-recognized and hopefully this series of articles will actually help to bring it to the fore for all the 60,000-plus Canadian physicians," he said from Calgary, where he teaches medicine at theUniversity of Calgary. "It's here, it's upon us now and it's sweeping the country."