Eideard

Sharon, PA — A man apparently thought the threat of spreading an infectious disease inside a café would be enough to get a cashier to cough up cash.

Police Chief Mike Menster said the assailant then told the clerk if he didn’t cooperate, he’d touch him and infect him with the antibiotic-resistant MRSA staph infection.

“It’s our first case of robbery by threat of an infectious disease,” Menster said.

Fred L. Parker, 41, told the cashier he had a deadly and highly contagious disease and offered to walk away if the cashier gave him money, police said. The cashier refused, and Parker left. He was arrested a short time later.

What a dolt!

A new report from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality shows that in the past decade, there have been a number of shifts in the reasons children are admitted to the hospital. The most notable change in hospital admission data involves severe skin infections, which more than doubled between 2000 and 2009 and now rank as the seventh most common reason for childhood hospitalization, up from 13th in 2000.

The increase is attributed to the rise of antibiotic-resistant staph infections — called methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA. A vast majority of MRSA cases happen in hospital settings or nursing homes, but 10 percent to 15 percent occur in the community among otherwise healthy people. Infections often strike people who are prone to cuts and scrapes, including children and athletes. MRSA spreads by skin-to-skin contact, typically in crowded conditions and through the sharing of contaminated personal items like towels.

“I don’t think it’s really well appreciated that in most communities, community-acquired MRSA has become the dominant cause of soft tissue infection requiring emergency department care and inpatient care,” said Dr. Patrick S. Romano…“People think of MRSA as a hospital bug, but it’s not just a hospital bug anymore. It’s a community bug…”

This is scary stuff and, yet, something that can be prevented by attention to hygiene including clean surroundings. No one’s going to be able disinfect playing fields or anyplace outdoors where kids will play – which is where many flavors of Staph Aureus abound. But, making certain children wash up when they get back home – especially around inevitable scrapes and bruises – is a requirement. As it always should have been.

Nothing new; but, those critters which lurk in the real world ready to attack at any opening are still alive and well and aren’t going away.

Researchers have demonstrated a prototype device that can rid hands, feet, or even underarms of bacteria, including the hospital superbug MRSA.

The device works by creating something called a plasma, which produces a cocktail of chemicals in air that kill bacteria but are harmless to skin. A related approach could see the use of plasmas to speed the healing of wounds…

Plasmas are known as the fourth state of matter, after solid, liquid, and gas. They are a soup of atoms that have had their electrons stripped off by, for example, a high voltage.

The new research focuses on so-called cold atmospheric plasmas.

Rather than turning a whole group of atoms into plasma, a more delicate approach strips the electrons off just a few, sending them flying…

The resulting plasma is harmful to bacteria, viruses, and fungi – the approach is already used to disinfect surgical tools…

Professor Gregor Morfill said that more testing of the devices is necessary before they end up in widespread use, but he said that there is already significant interest from industry.

RTFA. The systems have been miniaturized enough to be battery-operated and portable.

Cripes, I can see them supplanting underarm deodorant sticks someday.

A compound from a sea sponge was able to reverse antibiotic resistance in several strains of bacteria, making once-resistant strains succumb to readily available antibiotics.

“We can resensitize these pathogenic bacteria to standard, current-generation antibiotics,” said Peter Moeller of the NOAA’s Hollings Marine Laboratory in Charleston, South Carolina.

Drug-resistant bacteria are a growing problem in hospitals worldwide, marked by the rise of superbugs such as methicillin-resistant Staphyloccus aureus, or MRSA. Such infections kill about 19,000 people a year in the United States.

Moeller, who is working with researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina and North Carolina State University, said the team noticed a sponge thriving in what was an otherwise dead coral reef.

“It begged the question how is it surviving when everything else is dying?” Moeller told reporters at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago. “This opened up a whole new arena for us…”

Eventually, he foresees a new class of “helper drugs” that could restore the potency of antibiotics that have lost the war to superbugs. “Getting it through FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) approval will take awhile,” he said.

The kind of collateral discovery you always hope for in basic research. Of course, some dillweed faith-based politician would call the funding for this “pork” if the money wasn’t being spent in his own district.

Scientists at Swansea University have discovered a new type of antibiotic in maggot secretions that can tackle up to 12 different strains of MRSA, as well as E. coli and C. difficile.

The antibiotic, named Seraticin™, is derived from the maggot secretions of the common green bottle fly (Lucilia sericata) and scientists hope to develop it into an injection, pill or ointment.

So far, they have purified Seraticin™ and undertaken the study of its structure and the mechanism by which it prevents infection. The next steps will be to complete the identification of the compound and develop a way to synthesise it. It can then be tested on human cells and eventually in clinical trials in order to determine its medical effectiveness and properties as a novel antibiotic…

Dr Alun Morgan of ZooBiotic Ltd, based in Wales, that supplied the maggots for the project, said: “Maggots are great little multi-taskers. They produce enzymes that clean wounds, they make a wound more alkaline which may slow bacterial growth and finally they produce a range of antibacterial chemicals that stop the bacteria growing.”

Wartime survivors have used maggots as field expedients for centuries. Great little critters!