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A deadly germ untreatable by most antibiotics has killed a seventh person at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in Maryland.
The Washington Post reported the death Friday. NIH officials told the paper that the boy from Minnesota died Sept. 7. NIH says the boy arrived at the research hospital in Bethesda in April and was being treated for complications from a bone marrow transplant when he contracted the bug.
He was the 19th patient at the hospital to contract an antibiotic-resistant strain of KPC, or Klebsiella pneumoniae. The outbreak stemmed from a single patient carrying the superbug who arrived at the hospital last summer.
The paper reported the Minnesota boy's case marked the first new infection of this superbug at NIH since January.
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This is tragic, and my heart and prayers go out to the family and friends of this courageous young man.
If that bug survived for 8 months (the last known infection) in a vent, or on a surface, that is one scary bug!
I hope they can get this under control, that is a very important institution.
ship it to the mideast and other predominantly muslim countries....
Poor little guy .. The pain of losing your child is agony. The folks who post political statements when it concerns personal tragedy have a obsessional disorder. No matter what is talked about, their minds must talk about this one subject. Like religious extremists or any fanatical, one track mind ..all road lead to the one subject.
The child who had the bone marrow transplant would have had his own blood cells completely annihilated before the transplant and therefore was severely immunocompromised--meaning that he had no white blood cells yet to fight off any infectious attack. This super bug is a mutation that as right now, has no known antibiotic that can kill it. He would have contracted it somehow while in the hospital where he was being treated, and probably transferred to Maryland to attempt some better treatment which didn't succed. And probably all the antibiotics used indiscriminately by us for ourselves over time and on food supplies have had something to do with infection mutations. But really--what in the world does any of this have to do with politics ????????? NADA !!!!! If anything........at least the poor kid had a little chance when he had the bone marrow transplant...........with the present health care system many people would not have that option !!!!!!!
It was not this boy that brought the bug in. He caught it while he was at NIH and they were able to trace it back to another person who had been in the hospital. If anyone had a family member who had to watch them go through what he went through NO ONE would be making the heartless comments I've been reading from some people. It's easy to make a joke when it's not your family or friend.
totally agree. I can't believe how people joke about something so tragic. My son was only 19 when he died from CA-MRSA related necrotizing pneumonia in 09.
OK Einsteins, does anyone realize these "Superbugs" exist only in sterile hospitals and labs? When they march out the hospital front door destroying the earth, then I'll go into the defensive mode: THROW DIRT AT "EM! Keep dirty socks and underwear at your front door and window sills. Don't brush your teeth, all that.
They don't exist only in sterile hospitals and labs (though they are more common in these environments). I would also like to point out that the most dangerous superbugs are often community acquired - not hospital acquired - however, your chance of getting a hospital acquired superbug is higher than getting a community acquired superbug. Just an example - but for MRSA there are over 20 different mutations that occur in SCCMec (staphylococcal cassette chromosome Mec), some of these mutations are found in community acquired MRSA, and some are found in hospital acquired MRSA, some are found in both. Anyway, those MRSA that have the community acquired mutations are more deadly than those MRSA that have the hospital acquired mutations.
This is the truth. My 19 yr. old son had CA-MRSA. We have no idea where he got it but after a viral infection, he developed necrotizing pneumonia and a nasty bacteria that came along called PVL. That bacteria kills the white blood cells off leaving the body nothing to fight with and MRSA itself is so resistant to many antibiotics....while the necrotizing (flesh-eating) pneumonia ate away at his lungs and throat. He died less than a week after the coughing began. They called it a super bug and the sad fact is, no one really had an answer as to how to stop it. These diseases are out there; they are fast, deadly and too often unstoppable. My heart goes out to all the families who lost a loved one like this. Losing a child is the most agonizing thing I have ever known. I try to warn everyone about the dangers of CA-MRSA. So awful to know there are other 'superbugs' out there....
PVL is the toxin produced by CA-MRSA.
I am so sorry about your son. That is horrible.
Summer-1597193
I am so glad that someone here has actually heard of PVL. Most of the nurses and doctors I ask, don't even know what it is. Please continue to share your knowledge of this most horrible, deadly disease MRSA and PVL. If one life is saved, maybe I can feel my son did not die in vain. I try to tell everyone I can. Thank you for your compassion....and it is horrible. My life is changed forever. God bless....
sadmama, It was actually a question on my step 1 boards a few months ago. I also did a couple of research projects in the first two years of medical school - one of them on MRSA. PVL is the toxin that literally bores holes in the cell membranes and results in cellular death. It's also one of the reasons why CA-MRSA is more deadly than HA-MRSA - 85% of CA-MRSA isolates are positive for PVL, while none of the HA-MRSA isolates have been found to be positive for PVL. PVL also plays a key role in activating Staph Protein A, which is a pro-inflammatory factor for pneumonia.
MRSA in general, but particularly CA-MRSA, is a nasty, nasty bug. I am so sorry about your loss. I do hope you continue talking about your son - you are helping spread awareness.
I try to tell people. But thank you so much for taking the time to explain it a bit better to me. I have researched it a lot but there is so much to take in and I am glad that more is being learned. We were actually referred to an infectious disease Dr. when they found my son was a carrier. And even he just said that ppl were always so scared of MRSA but it wasn't such a big deal...No one ever warned us of the dangers of it and that it could be deadly. I hope more medical people learn more about it as it doesn't really seem all that rare anymore.
Normally, the carrier-state isn't a big deal - most people never get an actual infection from it. That said, you never know. Also, once someone is found to be a carrier, they should be treated with a protocol that has been shown to help eliminate the carrier state. Mupirocin in the nostrils, washing hair and body with chlorhexadine hydrocholoride 4% soap, using boiling water to wash clothes used during treatment, and some other home washing steps (such as washing bedding on the second day of treatment, and again after treatment is over; vacuuming mattresses on second day of treatment and again after treatment; etc., etc.) have been shown to eradicate the carrier state - but, sometimes this eradication doesn't work, and sometimes it needs to be repeated. In fact, if one person in the household is found to be positive, the recommendation is that everyone in the household be treated as a carrier without being tested.
Government workers will have the same healthcare, for the thousanth time quit lying. Also please quit making your talking points here when a health issue is being discussed. Geesh!! get a life.
We thought we were sooooooo good because we had eradicated all these germs. If only we had known. Now we have germs that have gained traction because we don't take the antibiotics the way they are prescribed, and the germs we thought we had taken out.
Pandora's box is opening wider.
Countrygirl, we actually have these bugs because we are over prescribed antibiotics..
TC: It's actually a combination of the reason you state and the reason Countrygirl states (along with several other factors - such as antibiotics in food supply prophylactically, natural evolutionary processes, etc., etc.).
Rest in peace little guy. I am getting ready for a heart surgery and I have been doing some reading on these hospital bugs, they are bad and we are not being told the full story's from hospitals. As a matter of fact we are being kept in the dark on purpose and lied to by hospitals. An elderly neighbor had back surgery last year and the surgery went fine but he got a bug an infection and it has had him back in the hospital once or twice a month for over a year. It has changed his way of life and almost killed him and he is far from being out of the woods. If you are in the hospital or someone you know get some bleach wipes and take them to the room. Wipe down everything in the room, door knobs, bed rails, the little table, sink bathroom (everything) and do it often when nurses come and go they carry it from room to room. Last year I was in a local hospital that has been laying off house keeping people and my room was not cleaned the 5 days I was in it. They came in got the garbage and left. My wife did all the cleaning and wiping down. I had a colonscopy last week at a hospital. The nurse gave me an enema I noticed that after she inserted it in me and flushed me she went over and opened my bathroom door with the latex gloves on. Anyone that opens that door is going to be putting their bare hand on that. You have to really have your radar up and they will get mad but to hell with them its your health and theirs in this enviroment. C Diff is a really bad bug right now it attacks the colon and a persons stomach swells to ten times its normal size excruciating pain and most likely deadly. Make them mad if you have to, wipe your room down often, if visitors come have them put on a gown and gloves. This stuff is spread from room to room. In this economy Hospitals ditch the housekeeping staffs and this is what happens to the patients they don't have enough time to properly clean your rooms. God Bless Take Care Out There.
My uncle died in 1984 because of a Hosptal Acquired Staphococcus infection. I can't tell if I misspelled Staphococcus because there's a bug on this page. Durn bugs!
This article falls short in as much as they don't report how far spread this bug is in the USA. The article also doesn't mention if the bug was brought in for terrorist reasons. Nor do they report the origin of the country it came from.
It seems strange that all other radical bugs have a antibiotic. This could be more dangerous than we suspect if this was brought here intentionally.
Time to call the "Men in Black"
Over use of antibiotics will lead to more super bugs not treatable by any current antibiotic. We are a nation dependent on drugs and as long as we continue to use them as we do more of these strains will become super bugs. Our granddaughter, who is 2, has been on so many antibiotics has a severe issue with thrush. We no longer allow the use of antibiotics on here because of the results that happen right after she starts using them. People should learn to take care of themselves rather than expecting a doctor and medicine to fix them.
For Gods sake hire a crew of cruise boat maids for a few weeks to give that hospital an antiviral scrub down. Also have them visit each home of the hospital staff and sterilize the place and also hose down the interior of each staff members vehicle. Are these people stupid? It is obviously in the nurses homes and they keep bringing it back! Probably one or two nurses are the source of it.
uh oh the goverernment let another out. they need to stop losing things,sounds like my wife, she is always losing @!$%#,makes me crazy
You are all worried about a super bug when 80,000 patients die each year from other common virus and bacteria they contract while in the hospital that the hospitals do have the methods to control but poor housekeeping lets them continue to survive and kill. Hospitals are responsible for 80,000 deaths each year due to poor house keeping
There is 2 options here ..A) This hospital has never heard of sanitation or B) the workers are doing a half a$$ job cleaning and should be fired asap!!!
So I guess the Commentary section on all these sites should just close. All the thoughts, opinions, feeble attempts at humor or commiseration is going to cause horrible offense to somebody else, and pages of commentary about THAT, generally having not a thing to do with the actual subject. I can see BIG lawsuits about somebody causing somebody else pain and suffering because they called the POTUS a silly nickname. I promise I won't join these discussions any more because I have early Peripheral Vascular Disease and I just can't walk a mile in everybody's shoes.
So, goodbye cruel world. No more debate for me. As a last farewell- OBOZO!!!!!!!
OMGosh!!!!!!!!!! I had MRSA in Oct - Nov of 2010... It took 3 weeks to get rid of it (via iv every 12 hours of vencomyicin). This is extremely scary - and alot of these 'super bugs' are because people are not finishing (or they're sharing) antibiotics. The bacteria becomes immune to the 'nornal' meds when the correct dosage isn't taken (when you stop taking the meds because you feel better or your sharing them with someone else so now 2 people are not getting the correct dose). The bacteria comes back into the population able to resist the 'normal meds'.
It's fascinating to read most of the comments believe that there is no treatment for these superbugs. I was of the same opinion five years ago. Our daughter was admitted to the hospital for a relatively basic surgery on her feet, and contracted two of these multi-drug resistant infections (MRSA and pseudomonas). She was in and out of the ICU monthly for the next 3 years. Then we found out, from one of her nurses, about a treatment that is commonly used in what used to be Eastern bloc countries. Bacteriophages are naturally occurring organisms that can eradicate or greatly reduce the severity of many of these superbugs. We have been importing these medications from the Republic of Georgia for the last two years, and our daughter no longer has MRSA (which antibiotics were not able to eliminate). The pseudomonas infection has a mild flare once or twice a year now, and it rarely requires a visit to the hospital. It is frustrating that so many people could be saved if this treatment was available here.
T2q Mom: Glad your daughter is doing better.
Interestingly, bacteriophages are, essentially, viruses that attack bacteria. So, when they use bacteriophages to attack bacteria - they are making the bacteria sick.
Yes, they are viruses, but they aren't making the bacteria sick; the bacteria is their "food". When the bacteria are gone, the virus dies, because it has nothing to consume.
T2qMom: This is an area I've studies extensively (in fact, I am someone that has discovered an classified a novel bacteriophage). They are, essentially, making the bacteria sick. Viruses don't eat or consume energy - they are DNA (or RNA) wrapped in protein - nothing more, nothing else. Consumption of energy (as you would think of as eating) requires a more sophisticated system than a virus.
Regarding animal feed, most antibiotics in this country are fed to factory farmed animals. Which is creating holy living hell for humans. It's already holy living hell for animals, they are packed together so tightly that any bacteria or virus spreads like wildfire, for example, avian flu exists in wild birds but proliferates like crazy in factory birds, it's so unnatural. The answer isn't to stop doing antibiotics in animals because as long as they're packed together and raised this way it's antibiotics or crazy wild disease. The answer is to stop supporting that system, yes, folks, it means buying locally grown, sustainable food and horrors to most people, reduce or eliminate your consumption of meat. There, I said it, and everybody is going to freak out -- what? Stop eating meat? Yes, if you don't want to support not only the holy living hell animals endure to be food and the holy living hell we are creating for ourselves with our unsustainable practices. Many, many, many, many people thrive on a mostly or fully plant based diet and don't even die on account of it, I have done it for nearly 20 years and feel no deprivation. It's your choice, it really is. If you don't like what's happening, start with your own choices.
Very true, Leslie. Before our daughter got the superbugs in the hospital, she would occasionally get urinary tract infections, and they were always from highly resistant bacteria. We couldn't figure that out, but we took her off of all except organically grown meat and poultry. And like magic, any urinary infections she got were no longer resistant to a wide range of bacteria, and in fact, most of them she could clear without medication. We are doing ourselves no favor by treating the animals we eat with antibiotics.
T2q Mom,
So glad that your daughter survived and is doing well.
Sounds like the NIH Hospital has the problem...The kid did not have this when he arrived there...
What is the hospital NOT doing to eradicate it?
These bugs are man mad. NIH knows this!!! Let's charge the doctor's for over prescribing these antibiotics. Better Yet!!! Let's do more Homeopathic, Herbs and supplementation before even using these deadly pharmaceutical drugs. This is our problem. We need to Change Our Health Care System on how we practice it. Because we are failing in the war of bugs (parasites, bacteria and virus).