Dangerous Bug Resistant to Conventional Antibiotics

By Denise Dador

August 23, 2006 - This resistant bacteria can quickly turn a happy baby desperately ill within a day. Evan McFarling's ordeal started as a fever that lasted 10 days. After antibiotics didn't work, a chest X-ray solved the mystery, which turned into an emergency.
"We went from a checkup to, we're going into heart surgery in about 20 minutes," Matt McFarling, Evan's father, said. Doctors found the tissue around the baby's heart was filled with a super bacteria called MRSA, and it's almost impossible to identify without a culture.

MRSA means methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and it's resistant to the most common antibiotics.

The community acquired type of MRSA usually enters the body through a scrape in the skin.

"If you, for example, have raw skin and you've been sitting on a bench and someone before has been sitting on the bench and had an oozing abscess, potentially you can get it that way," Dr. Jonathan Fielding of the L.A. County Department of Health Services said.

Dr. Fielding says overall such cases are still relatively uncommon, but people should try not to share personal hygiene items.

At first the infection presents like a pimple or bug bite.

"Most patients misidentify this as a spider bite. It sometimes itches. You'll get a large boil or abscess will start to form and we can see it spread or the boil itself will get larger and larger," Frank Myers, a clinical epidemiologist, said.

Pediatricians aren't sure how Josh Grant got MRSA. But he needed four surgeries to get rid of the infection from his lungs. Dr. Fielding says cases like this are usually quite rare.

"This is not a reason to panic, this is still relatively uncommon and it's very treatable," Dr. Fielding said.