Sports and bugs...the story of an infection!

Sports...hockey, football, baseball....big guys, tough guys. And who is the toughest guy of all? Not who you might think! Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) IS the tough one!

Recently, many pro athletes have been plagued by MRSA, short for methycillin resistant S. aureus. This type of bacteria is resistant to many, too many, antibiotics and can lead to desastrous infections and permanent conditions....death being one of them!

MRSA spreads quickly among athletes, especially those involved in contact sports, because many of us are colonized by this bacteria. YES WE ARE! We are covered by bacteria, in fact for each human cell there are 10 times as much bacteria...and not just S. aureus. The problem starts when S. aureus invades the skin, mostly where abrasion occurs. After sticking to damaged tissue, the bacteria starts to grow and invade the tissue a bit deeper causing boils. These boils eventually drain and pus comes out...it can be just a bit of pus...or it could be a lot! Pus contains bacteria and can then be transmitted to the next person through contact. If the bacteria is an MRSA then you can be in big trouble....

Peyton Manning of the Indianapolis Colts was revealed to have a staph infection, the Indianapolis Star reported Friday. University of North Carolina-Asheville fans also recently learned that Kenny George, the 7-foot-7 center on the basketball team, had a staph infection complication that led to part of his foot being amputated.

FROM CNN

Picture from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ihp/216070044/in/photostream/

Dressing up for disease....

I have been saying that for a long time to my students including nursing and medical students. This article was publised on the New York Times website

"In 2004, a study from the New York Hospital Medical Center of Queens compared the ties of 40 doctors and medical students with those of 10 security guards. It found that about half the ties worn by medical personnel were a reservoir for germs, compared with just 1 in 10 of the ties taken from the security guards. The doctors’ ties harbored several pathogens, including those that can lead to staph infections or pneumonia.

Another study at a Connecticut hospital sought to gauge the role that clothing plays in the spread of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA. The study found that if a worker entered a room where the patient had MRSA, the bacteria would end up on the worker’s clothes about 70 percent of the time, even if the person never actually touched the patient."

Superbugs and weed!

"Hey man...this is good stuff" might soon mean: "Hey dude, I got a cure against this MRSA bug thing". A few substances found in Cannabis sativa (Marijuana) including THC (the psychoactive ingredient) have been proven to inhibit the growth of Methicillin-Resistant S. aureus (MRSA). Based on their highly hydrophobic structure it seems like these compounds have an affinity for lipids and might indeed disrupt the membrane.

The authors point out that the mechanism remains elusive....I might know why it remains elusive!

Reference: http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/sample.cgi/jnprdf/2008/71/i08/pdf/np8002673.pdf