Virulent superbug found here

Researchers who discovered a superbug previously undocumented in central Ohio and rarely reported in the United States say it could represent a major public-health concern.

This type of methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, has been known to cause severe illness elsewhere, and its discovery is prompting researchers at Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center to call for more-detailed laboratory analysis of the types of infections found in hospitals and the community.

The research was published in Emerging Infectious Diseases, a journal of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Drs. Shu-Hua Wang and Kurt B. Stevenson, infectious-disease experts at Ohio State, led the effort.

Their team wanted to better understand how MRSA infections move within the community and hospitals, and they stumbled upon the unexpected type, ST239-III.

They analyzed samples from 1,286 patients at Wexner Medical Center and seven smaller community hospitals and found that 6 percent of the patients with MRSA had that strain.MRSA always is serious, but this type mostly has been seen in other countries, including China, and is known to be virulent, potentially causing deadlier bloodstream and lung infections.

Its presence at Ohio State and elsewhere is a clear indication that everyone in the state should be concerned, Stevenson said.

Typically, the tests that look for suspected MRSA don’t include a detailed molecular analysis to determine the type. That should change, the researchers say.

“Identification of this strain emphasizes the need for molecular surveillance,” Stevenson said. “ It’s in other places, probably other places in Ohio and central Ohio, and you wouldn’t realize it’s there, because no one looks for it.”

Eventually, identifying the strain could lead to different treatment protocols for patients, including the level of infection-control measures taken with them, Wang said. And it could help scientists find links and better understand how and where the bug is spread, she said.

With that kind of information, “maybe we can break the cycle of transmission,” Wang said.

The team’s research points to the strain’s presence in Ohio as early as 2007 but does not indicate any outbreaks associated with it.

Almost all of the patients with the newly recognized strain had infections considered to be associated with contact with hospitals and health-care settings rather than infections picked up in the community. Twenty-two percent of them died, compared with 17 percent of those with the MRSA strain most typically seen in hospitals.

The state does not track isolated MRSA infections, only those connected in reported outbreaks. So far this year, it has recorded 59 cases associated with six outbreaks, including one in Madison County. There were 34 outbreaks from 2009 through 2011.

In 2010, the Ohio Hospital Association’s Quality Institute worked with 17 central Ohio hospitals and reduced MRSA infections by 11 percent, resulting in a 56 percent reduction in potentially deadly bloodstream infections, much of that attributed to better hand-washing.  Columbus Dispatch