Ken
At 03:10 PM 7/21/01 EDT, you wrote:
>>>>
Has anyone had experience with CS and staph? Return-Path:<<<<
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Supergerm Beats New Antibiotic
By EMMA ROSS
The Associated Press
LONDON (July 19) - In a frustrating development in the battle against
drug-resistant bacteria, scientists
report the first entirely new type of antibiotic in 35 years has been
beaten by the staph supergerm little more
than a year after being introduced.
Researchers at Harvard Medical School describe in The Lancet medical
journal this week how an 85
year-old man on dialysis came down with a staph infection in the
lining of his intestines that was not
vulnerable to the new drug, Zyvox. It is the first report of staph
resistance to the medicine.
Experts said that while the finding is disappointing, it isn't
surprising - they have learned to expect the
unpredictable from crafty bacteria - and the drug still should be
able to help many people.
``It's a heads up that you have to keep an eye on it,'' said Dr. Mary
Jane Ferraro, director of microbiology
at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, who found the resistant
strain. ``It was only a matter of time.
Whether or not it's going to become prevalent, or whether this is
going to be a rare thing, we can't predict.''
Staphylococcus aureus is considered the most successful of all
bacterial germs because it produces such a
wide range of infections in so many people.
It is the leading cause of infections acquired in hospitals worldwide
and causes ailments ranging from boils
and urinary tract infections to toxic shock syndrome and pneumonia.
Half of all staph that circulates in hospitals is resistant to
meticillin, the standard drug used to treat it. Now it
is developing resistance to the main reserve drug, the antibiotic
vancomycin.
In a bid to slow resistance, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention now advise doctors to
refrain from using vancomycin unless absolutely necessary.
Consequently, Zyvox is becoming more widely
used in the United States.
``We may discover, within the course of the next few months that
(using Zyvox so widely) is untenable, but
we don't know at this stage,'' said Dr. Roger Finch, a professor of
infectious diseases at Nottingham
University in England who was involved in the testing of the new
drug.
Zyvox is a synthetic chemical designed to fight germs at a different
point in their life cycle than any other
antibiotic. It stops bacteria from making protein, which in turn
stops their growth, so the body's immune
system can step in and finish them off.
Known chemically as linezolid, it is the first in a long-awaited
class of antibiotics called oxazolidinones and
has arrived just as bacteria are becoming increasingly resistant to
vancomycin.
Zyvox was released in the United States in April 2000 and in Britain
in January. It is not yet available in
other countries. So far, 80,000 patients have received it, according
to the drug's maker, Pharmacia Corp.
``It's frustrating. So much effort goes into the development of these
drugs - huge resources - and one
hoped that we would have had a number of years of successful use of
this agent,'' because it was different
from older antibiotics, Finch said. ``It's disturbing and it means
we've got to keep looking for new
approaches.''
A handful of drugs belonging to this new class are in the pipeline,
experts said. David
http://members.aol.com/cmhdavid/
http://www.i-charity.net/bin/ptn/184
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