“Community Acquired Superbugs”

Antibiotic resistant organisms were found in the community as early as 1945, four years after the introduction of penicillin. With a growing population of chronically ill people harboring infections such as MRSA, the chances for becoming infected in the community, rather than in the hospital, have been rising over the past 20 years. Over the past 10 years, other hospital antibiotic infections have also begun to move into the community, posing an ever more malignant potential threat.

Most recently a combination of media coverage and a sudden increase in the incidence of what is now called “community acquired MRSA,” has lead to a rise in public awareness of what health care professionals have known about for years. Recent deaths have been attributed to exposure in schools, restaurants, gyms and locker rooms. Some of these superbugs have mutated in the community, and are of different strains than those found in hospitals. The reverse threat of hospital patients and staff being exposed by these organisms now presents a new wrinkle to the superbug problem. For instance, patients in England are now tested for resistant Staph in the days prior to a proposed surgical procedure in an effort to prevent  post-surgical superbug infections from MRSA.