Deadly new form of MRSA emerges

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Last Updated: Tuesday, 15 January 2008, 08:50 GMT

Deadly new form of MRSA emerges
MRSA
The new strain can lead to blood poisoning
A deadly strain of the superbug MRSA which can lead to a flesh-eating form of pneumonia has emerged.

Research suggests it may be more prevalent among the gay community - the gay San Francisco district of Castro appears to have been hardest hit.

So far only two cases of the new form of the USA300 strain of the bug have been recorded in the UK.

It is not usually contracted in hospitals, but in the community - often by casual contact.


We do know that the USA300 strain is extremely good at spreading between people through skin-to-skin contact
Professor Mark Enright
Imperial College

The new strain is resistant to treatment by many front-line antibiotics.

It causes large boils on the skin, and in severe cases can lead to fatal blood poisoning or necrotising pneumonia, which eats away at the lungs.

Researchers say the bug has so far been 13 times more prevalent in gay men in San Francisco than in other people.

In the Castro district - where more gay people live than anywhere else in the US - about one in 588 people are carrying the bug.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7188741.stm
 
Drug-resistant staph found to be passed in gay sex
Mon Jan 14, 2008 6:17pm EST

By Amanda Beck

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A drug-resistant strain of potentially deadly bacteria has moved beyond the borders of U.S. hospitals and is being transmitted among gay men during sex, researchers said on Monday.

They said methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, is beginning to appear outside hospitals in San Francisco, Boston, New York and Los Angeles.

Sexually active gay men in San Francisco are 13 times more likely to be infected than their heterosexual neighbors, the researchers reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

"Once this reaches the general population, it will be truly unstoppable," said Binh Diep, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco who led the study. "That's why we're trying to spread the message of prevention."

According to chemical analyses, bacteria are spreading among the gay communities of San Francisco and Boston, the researchers said.

"We think that it's spread through sexual activity," Diep said.

This superbug can cause life-threatening and disfiguring infections and can often only be treated with expensive, intravenous antibiotics.

It killed about 19,000 Americans in 2005, most of them in hospitals, according to a report published in October in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

About 30 percent of all people carry ordinary staph chronically. It can be passed by touching other people or by depositing the bacteria on surfaces or objects.

The bacteria can cause deep-tissue infections if they enter the body through a wound in the skin.

Of those people who carry staph, most carry it in their noses but community-based MRSA also can live in and around the anus and is passed between sexual partners.

Incidence of MRSA is rising along with the resurgence of syphilis, rectal gonorrhea, and new HIV infections partly because of changes in beliefs about the severity of HIV and an increase in risky behaviors, such as illicit drug use and having sex that abrades the skin, Diep's team wrote.

"Your likelihood of contracting each of these diseases increases with the number of sexual partners that you have," Diep said. "The same can probably be said for MRSA."

Staph infections often look like raised red dots on the skin. Left untreated, the areas can swell and fill with pus.

The best way to avoid infection is by washing the hands or genitals with soap and water, Diep said.

(Editing by Maggie Fox and Bill Trott)
 
Damn and hes a two timer too?

I have seen him kissing Arab leaders too.

I wonder if him and Laura have one of those "open" marriages?
 
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