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Category Archives: zoonotic

June 24, 2009

MRSA and pets

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, colonization, community

June 12, 2009

H1N1 flu and swine surveillance – more relevance for MRSA

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Constant readers, you probably know that yesterday the World Health Organization declared the first flu pandemic in 41 years. I want to point out for you a side issue in the H1N1 story that has great relevance for MRSA, especially ST398. As described in this article I wrote last night for CIDRAP, three medical journal articles [...]

Written by Maryn McKenna

Also posted in H1N1, MRSA, ST 398, animals, surveillance, veterinary

June 11, 2009

Farm animals and antibiotics – a new campaign

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I was gobsmacked to discover today, a few days late, that the Pew Campaign on Human Health and Industrial Farming (authors of the report discussed here) have launched a marvelously in-your-face series of ads in Washington DC, aimed at bringing the issue of antibiotic use in farm animals to people who might not think about [...]

Written by Maryn McKenna

Also posted in MRSA, animals, resistance

June 10, 2009

MRSA in pig-farm workers – very high rates

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Let’s go back for a moment to what I think of as the “third epidemic” of MRSA: ST398 and the other strains that reside in animals and cross to humans. (In my personal taxonomy, the first and second epidemics are hospital-acquired and community-associated.) Via Emerging Infectious Diseases, the open-access journal published by the CDC (Do I [...]

Written by Maryn McKenna

Also posted in Europe, MRSA, ST 398, animals, pigs

May 15, 2009

MRSA in the House of Lords — the silly, the serious

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Thanks to constant reader Pat Gardiner, we have the transcript of the UK House of Lords discussion on community MRSA, called there PVL-MRSA after the toxin. (Go to the linked page, and click down to the time-mark 3.16 pm.) It’s encouraging to see some members of a government taking MRSA seriously. The members are asking [...]

Written by Maryn McKenna

Also posted in Europe, ST 398, UK, animals, food, pigs

April 23, 2009

ST398 found again — in Italy

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There’s a letter in the upcoming issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases (hat tip Pat Gardiner) alerting the medical community that “pig MRSA” ST398 has been found in Italy, adding t the steadily enlarging list of countries where this strain has been identified. (NB: Because most of these surveys are one-offs, we don’t yet know whether ST398 [...]

Written by Maryn McKenna

Also posted in Europe, ST 398, animals, food, invasive

April 1, 2009

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

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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, colonization, food, hospitals, pigs

March 26, 2009

Bill in Congress: "Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment" Act

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Important news for anyone concerned about the spread of “pig MRSA” ST398: Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) and Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) have introduced a bill that would restrict important classes of antibiotics for use against disease only, taking them out of the realm of subtherapeutic use or growth promotion in agriculture. The bill would allow [...]

Written by Maryn McKenna

Also posted in ST 398, animals, antibiotics, food, pigs, poultry

March 12, 2009

MRSA and animals — an elephant, this time.

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So, constant readers, I have wrestled another chapter to the ground — and thus have a few minutes’ breathing space to talk about a story that some of you have asked about privately. I’ve been wondering whether to post on this, because the entire episode is in the book, and I don’t want to [...]

Written by Maryn McKenna

Also posted in MRSA, ST 398, USA 300, animals, elephant, recurrent

February 3, 2009

More MRSA, more meat – poultry, this time

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Constant readers: Fresh from the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases — posted AOP (electronic publication/ahead of print) this afternoon — comes more news of MRSA ST 398, the “pig strain,” in food animals. This time, it’s chickens, in Belgium. The authors (from Ghent University and the Veterinary and Agrochemical Research Center in Brussels) took swabs from living [...]

Written by Maryn McKenna

Also posted in Europe, MRSA, ST 398, animals, antibiotics, food, poultry