Staph Infection

Staphylococcus aureus, the most common cause of staph infections, is a spherical bacterium, frequently living on the skin or in the nose of a healthy person, that can cause a range of illnesses from minor skin infections and abscesses, to life-threatening diseases such as pneumonia, meningitis, endocarditis, Toxic shock syndrome (TSS), and septicemia. Abbreviated to S. aureus or Staph aureus in medical literature, S. aureus should not be confused with the similarly named species of the genus Streptococcus.

Antibiotic resistance in S. aureus was almost unknown when penicillin was first introduced in 1943; indeed, the original petri dish on which Alexander Fleming observed the antibacterial activity of the penicillium mould was growing a culture of S. aureus. By 1950, 40% of hospital S. aureus isolates were penicillin resistant; and by 1960, this had risen to 80%.

Today, S. aureus has become resistant to many commonly used antibiotics. In the UK, only 2% of all S. aureus isolates are sensitive to penicillin with a similar picture in the rest of the world, due to a penicillinase. The ß-lactamase-resistant penicillins were developed to treat penicillin-resistant S. aureus and are still used as first-line treatment. Methicillin was the first antibiotic in this class to be used, but only two years later, the first case of methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) was reported in England. Despite this, MRSA generally remained an uncommon finding even in hospital settings until the 1990's when there was an explosion in MRSA prevalence in hospitals where it is now endemic.

...More at Wikipedia 

Related Links:

• US National Library of Medicine

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