Blog

Category Archives: colonization

June 24, 2009

MRSA and pets

0 Comments
It’s been a while since we’ve focused on the presence of MRSA strains in pets, and the complications that can cause for the pets’ human owners/custodians/companions (or, in the view of my own two cats, abject servants. No, I will not post their pictures. I have some shreds of pride). The problem with MRSA and pets [...]
Written by Maryn McKenna
Also posted in MRSA, ST 398, animals, community, zoonotic
April 14, 2009

More MRSA in pigs, in Portugal

0 Comments
A brand-new report, in a letter to the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents, indicates that ST398 “pig MRSA” has been found in Portugal for the first time. Constanca Pomba and colleagues from the Technical University of Lisbon swabbed and cultured the noses of pigs and veterinarians on two pig farms in different regions of Portugal, and [...]
Written by Maryn McKenna
Also posted in Europe, MRSA, MSSA, ST 398, animals, antibiotics, food, pigs
April 13, 2009

MRSA in a hospital nursery

0 Comments
Via the Boston Globe and the blog of the hospital’s CEO comes work of an ongoing outbreak of community-associated MRSA in the newborn nursery at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston: …between last November and March, BIDMC experienced several occurrences or “clusters” of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, infections that have affected some of our [...]
Written by Maryn McKenna
Also posted in USA 300, hospitals, infection control, newborn
April 1, 2009

More news on ST398, "pig MRSA," in Europe

0 Comments
Two new papers have been posted ahead-of-print to the website of Emerging Infectious Diseases, the free journal published monthly by the CDC. (It’s a great journal. Just go.) One, from the Austrian National Reference Center for Nosocomial Infections, reports that out of 1,098 isolates from infected or colonized hospital patients collected between 2006 and 2008, 21 [...]
Written by Maryn McKenna
Also posted in Europe, MRSA, ST 398, animals, food, hospitals, pigs, zoonotic
March 31, 2009

MRSA news from Europe – Society for General Microbiology

0 Comments
The annual meeting of the UK’s Society for General Microbiology is taking place this week, so here’s a quick roundup of MRSA-related news. As with these posts from a year ago, abstracts are not online; in a few cases there are press releases from the science-news service EurekAlert. MRSA-colonized patients who have been identified in a [...]
Written by Maryn McKenna
Also posted in animals, antibacterial, antibiotics, hand hygiene, hospitals, natural remedies
March 26, 2009

MRSA research at Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America meeting

0 Comments
As promised, a round-up of some of the research presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA), held last weekend in San Diego. (Disclosure: I was on the faculty for the meeting; in exchange for co-hosting a session, SHEA will be reimbursing me for airfare and hotel. I wasn’t [...]
Written by Maryn McKenna
Also posted in ERs, MRSA, SHEA, hand hygiene, hospitals, infection control, invasive, nosocomial
January 15, 2009

This is what hand hygiene looks like

0 Comments
Contant reader Robyn pointed out an amazing image in the New England Journal of Medicine issue I discussed below. I missed it (thanks, Robyn!), so I went back and retrieved it. Here’s what you’re looking at: The Cleveland Veterans Affairs Medical Center discovered via a routine nasal swab that a quadriplegic patient was colonized with MRSA; [...]
Written by Maryn McKenna
Also posted in MRSA, disinfection, hand hygiene
December 23, 2008

Brilliant entrepreneur asks: "So why CAN’T you fix this?"

0 Comments
Constant readers, you’ll note that posting has slowed down a bit: I am deep into a chapter that is giving me some difficulty. (And I seem to be playing holiday host to an unexpected bout of bronchitis. I’m sure I didn’t need both lungs…) But here’s something that crossed my monitor this morning, and it’s worth [...]
Written by Maryn McKenna
Also posted in Europe, MRSA, UK, decolonization, hospitals, infection control, nosocomial
November 26, 2008

MRSA in newborns on Prince Edward Island: HA? CA? Matters?

0 Comments
There’s been a running story for several weeks now about the Queen Elizabeth Hospital on Prince Edward Island (home to mussels and Anne of Green Gables). The hospital struggled earlier this year with an outbreak of MRSA and a second outbreak of VRE among adult patients. It got those under control, but since earlier this [...]
Written by Maryn McKenna
Also posted in Canada, MRSA, community, decolonization, disinfection, hospitals, infection control, nosocomial
November 16, 2008

New newspaper series on HA-MRSA

0 Comments
The Seattle Times this morning launched an three-day investigative project on incidence of HA-MRSA in Washington State that is worth reading. As readers here already know, MRSA is not a reportable disease, and there are no diagnosis codes that directly correspond to MSRA that make infection or death easily trackable through hospital records or death certificates. [...]
Written by Maryn McKenna
Also posted in hand hygiene, hospitals, infection control, invasive, medical errors, nosocomial, rapid testing, surveillance