The Rise of Superbugs

“Superbugs”

As the twentieth century advanced, hospital acquired infection rates climbed. Staph aureus infections spread rapidly in the 1950s until Methicillin was introduced in 1960. Methicillin-resistant Staph aureus (“MRSA” was described only one year later). Resistance was natural, and was once again the result of overuse of the drug (for instance, Methicillin was even sprayed in the air of infant nurseries in an effort to prevent infection).

Patients with chronic diseases such as diabetes, obstructive pulmonary disease, hepatitis, AIDS and tuberculosis survived longer and soon became reservoirs for resistant organisms after having survived multiple infections and antibiotic treatments. Chronic immune suppression, the inevitable concomitant of such long survival, and the overuse of antibiotics added to the problem.

In hospitals, the use of antibiotics became the recommended treatment for surgical procedures, as standardized by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Chronic antibiotic usage in the intensive care unit (ICU) setting also became standard. Failure to regularly use antibiotics to treat any perceived or possible infection soon became a regular cause for medical malpractice actions, even as the same patients who were dying of antibiotic-resistant infections were doing so as a result of the overzealous use of antibiotics.

The Catch-22 irony of having to live by a standard that demanded the overuse of antibiotics in the face of a growing in-hospital epidemic of antibiotic-resistant infections lead to the naming of these organisms as “Superbugs.”

The result is that a growing population of patients are surviving in hospitals who carry an increasingly various assortment of resistant infections other than MRSA. Some of these organisms that are of growing concern include Coagulase-negative Staphycoccus, vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus, Streptococcus, Klebsiella oxytoca, Serratia marescens, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Legionnaires disease, and resistant Candida albicans.

There were an estimated 94,360 invasive MRSA infections in 2005, with an estimated 18,650 deaths. MRSA now kills more people annually in the U.S. than AIDS and breast cancer combined. Some MRSA infections are resistant to vancomycin, and many MRSA superbug infections have no antibiotic answers for them at all. Other organisms, such as Enterococcus faecium, have mortality rates as high as 96% for those patients who suffer them.