There is a high proportion of antibiotic resistance in bacteria that cause common infections. A new study suggests that the same might be happening in case of methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bugs.
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A brand new study indicates that MRSA-induced diseases with the incorrect antibiotic could worsen the infection.
“Individuals infected with MRSA who receive a beta-lactam antibiotic-one of the most common types of antibiotics-could end up being sicker than if they received no treatment at all”, explains study co-senior author George Liu, from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
Researchers gave the mice a high level of MRSA bacteria to cause an infection, then administered beta-lactam antibiotics as treatment. Thus, the treatment is often hard and needs a combination of drug therapies, which include beta lactam, a class of drugs made up of penicillin derivatives.
They further speculate that over-prescription of beta-lactam antibiotics such as ceftriaxone will continue due to lack of awareness, limited MRSA rapid diagnostic techniques and a reluctance not to over-prescribe the gold standard treatment for MRSA – vancomycin.
However, one of these enzymes called PBP2A is not turned off in MRSA when the infection is exposed to the antibiotics.
Johnson adds: “Fully understanding how pathogens such as MRSA cause infections helps us develop healthcare interventions to prevent them, for example, developing effective vaccines or new diagnostic tests”. In addition, it results in the death of more than 11,000 people around the world each year.
They say that these findings increase the idea that prescribing beta lactam antibiotics for humans that have staph infections may not be a good idea.
But the authors urge caution in extending the interpretation of this preclinical study to humans until more research is conducted.
Infected patients advocate before prescribing antibiotics that are initial health practitioners to know the origin of the disease first via lab testing.
Although many studies have established that MRSA infections cause more severe diseases compared with normal staph infections, what makes MRSA so pathogenic is not entirely clear.
Staphylococcus aureus, also termed as “staph”, is a kind of bacteria usually carried on the skin or inside the nose of healthy people.
Beta-lactam antibiotics are the most commonly used group of antibiotics. The typical treatment is beta-lactam.
They also found that the cell wall’s structure is different from normal staph, which allows the superbug to proliferate. Beta-lactam antibiotics kill the bacteria by inhibiting these proteins.
“This adapted cell wall causes a strong inflammatory reaction”.
The Cedars-Sinai researchers said the altered cell walls have a “powerful inflammatory response”.
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“In situations where there is a lot of infection, this highly aggressive response can cause extensive inflammation and tissue damage, effectively making the consequences of the infection worse”, Liu said. It could take a day or perhaps two to conclude if MRSA indeed is the culprit. “Our hope is that by understanding better the pros and cons of picking between the various antibiotics that are available, we can improve patient care”.
