MRSA Staph
What is MRSA? Let’s start with Staphylococcus aureus, more commonly known as staph. Staph is the name given to a group of bacteria that is quite common to all of us and usually relatively benign.
Between one-quarter and one-third of the people in the world (and most likely many more), some two billion, carry staph in their nose or throat, or on their skin. Most of the time it’s completely harmless, although it is a common cause of skin problems, such as pimples and boils.
In hospitals and other medical facilities, however, staph is more worrisome. It can lead to serious infections of the bloodstream and the urinary tract, pneumonia, endocarditis, meningitis, toxic shock syndrome, and even death. Over half a million hospital patients contract serious staph infections during their stay every year in this country. It’s one of the biggest health risks of going to a hospital.
But for the vast majority of people who aren’t in a medical facility, ordinary staph is usually quite harmless, and when it does cause problems, it can be successfully treated with common antibiotics.
But MRSA is different—it is a strain of staph that has become resistant to the penicillin family of antibiotics, even methicillin, one of the most powerful of antibiotics. Most cases of MRSA are fairly mild, causing a pimple or boil which may be very sore and contain pus. But it often leads to severe illness in victims, which can result in amputations, and can be fatal.
