New Super Bug strain infects more people
Pastor Dale Morgan
New Super Bug strain infects more people*
By Nic Fleming and Nick Britten
Last Updated: 6:39pm GMT 18/12/2006
Officials this evening moved to reassure patients after three further
cases of a deadly strain of superbug that has spread in a British
hospital for the first time were identified.
The Health Protection Agency announced at the weekend that a healthcare
worker and a patient had died of the infection, and that they were among
eight people who had caught the potent form of MRSA that affects the
young and the healthy.
A spokesman for the University Hospital of North Staffordshire, in
Stoke-on-Trent, today admitted it was the hospital at the centre of the
outbreak, and that three further individuals had received treatment.
The bug is a strain of MRSA that produces a toxin called
Panton-Valentine leukocidin (PVL). There have been fatal cases of PVL+
MHRA in the community before and outbreaks in hospitals.
The recently announced deaths are the first fatal cases acquired in a
British hospital. Both cases died extremely swiftly after contracting
the infection and are thought to have caught it in the same ward.
Of the 11 cases, seven caught the bug at University Hospital of North
Staffordshire and four got it through sharing a house with one of the
affected healthcare workers. Only two of the cases were patients.
The bacteria can spread through skin-to-skin contact or could be passed
on through people using the same towel. The West Midlands outbreak was
discovered following the death of a previously healthy female hospital
worker who developed pneumonia and sceptic shock before dying.
Subsequent screening showed a colleague on the same ward had contracted
the same strain of PVL+ MRSA, as had four of their friends.
One of these friends worked in a different ward at the hospital and
further screening identified another worker and a patient who were infected.
Retrospective analysis showed an inpatient at the hospital died of the
superbug in March, within 24 hours of developing suspected pneumonia.
A hospital spokesman said no current patients had been identified as
having been infected and there “is no need for any other patient to be
concerned”. The staff members currently being treated for carrying PVL
are off work.
The spokesman refused to give any details of the patient or member of
staff who died. He said that all staff in both affected wards, and their
families, were screened for signs of infection.
Around 130 staff members have so far been tested and where they are
found to be carrying the bacteria but are not infected, they use
treatment such as nasal creams and anti-bacterial washes for around five
days.
PVL+ strains of MRSA are forms of the bacteria that are both resistant
to methicillin and produce the PVL toxin. While most MRSA infections
target elderly people and others in hospitals with weakened immune
systems, strains that are PVL+ destroy the body’s white blood cells and
affect young, healthy people.
There have been five deaths from non-hospital acquired PVL+ MRSA over
the last two years. One of the first cases was the death of a Royal
Marine recruit, Richard Campbell-Smith, in 2004. Mr Campbell-Smith, 18,
was four weeks from the end of his 32-week course at the Commando
Training Centre in Lympstone, when he reportedly scratched his legs
while running on October 31, 2004.
He was dead within three days after contracting an MRSA-type infection.
A post-mortem examination showed heart and respiratory failure along
with traces of PVL.
A medical expert at his inquest said disease was thought to have had
died out in the 1950s, but that it had returned this century.
Dr Angela Kearns, an MRSA expert at the Health Protection Agency, said
today: “When people contract PVL-producing strains of MRSA, they usually
experience a skin infection such as a boil or abscess.
“Most infections can be treated successfully with everyday antibiotics
but occasionally a more severe infection may occur.
“The HPA is advising the hospital on outbreak control measures, and will
continue to monitor MRSA infection nationally.”