Texas Football Succumbs to Virulent Staph Infection

[KansasSooner]

I had no idea this was such a problem.


http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=alxhrJDn.cdc

[Blues1]

Gitta get back to Natural Grass.....

[batonrougesooner]

bathe daily people.

seriously, this can be much better controlled with a little soap and water.

[BigRedJed]

...unless it's antibacterial soap and water, ironically.

I'm a daily bather, thorough, using hot, hot water. Anyone who's gone to a SF lunch with me knows that I'm also a compulsive hand washer. Until last year, all of the soap in my house was anti-bacterial. Nevertheless, I got MRSA on more than one occasion, and it is teh painful. And teh scary.

My doc told me that the antibacterial soap is part of the problem. It kills the relatively harmless germs and allows the tougher MRSA to survive without any natural competition from the others.

Also, re-using your bath towel can be a problem, laying a gym towel on a surface that might have come into contact with someone else's, etc. On top of that, it can get in your sheets, towels etc. and survive the washing machine. It's teh nasty.

[sooner_born_1960]

Rub some dirt on it.

[RedstickSooner]

...unless it's antibacterial soap and water, ironically.

I'm a daily bather, thorough, using hot, hot water. Anyone who's gone to a SF lunch with me knows that I'm also a compulsive hand washer. Until last year, all of the soap in my house was anti-bacterial. Nevertheless, I got MRSA on more than one occasion, and it is teh painful. And teh scary.

My doc told me that the antibacterial soap is part of the problem. It kills the relatively harmless germs and allows the tougher MRSA to survive without any natural competition from the others.

Also, re-using your bath towel can be a problem, laying a gym towel on a surface that might have come into contact with someone else's, etc. On top of that, it can get in your sheets, towels etc. and survive the washing machine. It's teh nasty.

Yo, BigRed! This has always confused me a bit. On the one hand, doctors are increasingly alarmed by the quantity of drug-resistant infections which are cropping up. On the other hand, they play a big part in being responsible for the problem. I've heard that anti-bacterial soap can contribute, but I've also heard that doctors prescribing antibiotics simply to appease a patient help to breed these antibiotic resistant strains.

If you need to wash your hand because of concerns over hygiene, personally, I recomment that you keep a spray bottle of bleach handy. You don't need to use it full strength, it won't hurt you (unless you're one of those freaks who are allergic to bleach), and it kills *everything*.

You spray a surface down with bleach, and even if it's highly dillute (say 15 parts per million), you're still gonna kill pretty much everything. And at those levels, bleach does very, very little to human skin.

Smells a bit funny, of course, but you can overcome that obstacle by dilluting it before you put it in the spray bottle. Say, put 2 millileters of bleach in with 100 mills of water -- and you've got 14 parts per million of bleach.

That'll kill almost anything, and it shouldn't cause any harm to a human.

However, if any of our resident doctors want to chime in, I'd certainly appreciate their insight. I'm just a layman. Most of my chlorine knowledge comes from trying to keep the pool clean & clear. I believe that the concepts from pool sterilization cross over to hand sterilization, but there's every chance I'm unaware of, or overlooking some issue which makes bleach unacceptable as a hand sterilizer.

[Rogue]

Good old soap and water...often. The hand sanitizers with alcohol are good too, but for MRSA and stuff...BRJ is right it's the soap and water dealio.

[fadada1]

these things are going to happen as long as we have athletics - especially football. anytime an open wound comes into contact with bacteria, the chances skyrocket. the amount of open wounds/cuts associated with football, piled on with all the sweat/dirt from other people... it's going to happen.

you can't blame artificial turf for anything other than creating more cuts/abrasions. it's up to the coaches and trainers to force these kids to give themselves a good scrubdown after games - especially on turf where cuts are more likely to happen.

i'd hazzard a guess that many of these infections are a product of the weight room. don't blame the turf (not entirely anyway).

[Lott's Bandana]

That story kinna pizzes me offs....way its written.

The foto looks like a grieving Mama and it isn't till teh end dat it says her boy turned out okay...

Glad fo dat.

[stoopified]

The problem is Horn players can't keep their staph out of skanks. :D

[KansasSooner]

heh

[olevetonahill]

They should just drink Natty lite

[MextheBulldog]

And you thought Chuck E Cheese was dirty...

[HSC-Sooner]

Antibacterial soap isn't good enough (or any soap for that matter) if you lather briefly. People in the healthcare profession stress that you should lather for about 30 seconds with warm water, that should be enough to be rid of >99% of hand pathogens.

The over-prescribing of antibiotics also can contribute to breeding drug resistant pathogens since you're increasing the number of patients who might not finish all of their pills/dosages.

The bleach works pretty well, you can also take 80% alcohol and disinfect your hands with it.

[olevetonahill]

Antibacterial soap isn't good enough (or any soap for that matter) if you lather briefly. People in the healthcare profession stress that you should lather for about 30 seconds with warm water, that should be enough to be rid of >99% of hand pathogens.

The over-prescribing of antibiotics also can contribute to breeding drug resistant pathogens since you're increasing the number of patients who might not finish all of their pills/dosages.

The bleach works pretty well, you can also take 80% alcohol and disinfect your hands with it.

Aint that what I said ?
Just Drink Booze and Its all good .;)

[BajaOklahoma]

Dec 3, 2007
While a Williams High School football player did have a staph infection, his death was not related to the antibiotic-resistant form of staph known as MRSA.

“We can confirm that this child did not have MRSA - or, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Also, at this time, there is no evidence that the infection was associated with school activities, or caused other students to be exposed to staph,” Collin County epidemiologist Janet Glowicz said in a written statement.

The 15-year-old sophomore identified as Chad Jeter, died Thursday morning of “sepsis due to blunt force to the leg” at Children’s Medical Center in Dallas, according to the Dallas County Medical Examiners office.

Dr. R. Doug Hardy, an associate professor infectious disease at UT Southwester Medical School and an infectious disease specialist at Children’s said that sepsis in not uncommon and is not contagious. Hardy is not connected with the Jeter case.

“Typically it’s not contagious,” he said “It’s the result of something that happens to them. The most common cause is trauma, For example, they smash something really hard.”

A patient with sepsis typically is very sick with a fever, low blood pressure, a rapid heart rate and bacteria in blood. The disease can lead to organ failure and even death. While MRSA and other forms of staph infections represent a serious problem, they are more easily managed as skin infections. When the infection reaches the bloodstream, it becomes more invasive.

“All staph is bad,” Hardy said. “It is particularly bad if it reaches the blood stream.”

The bacteria can enter through any kind of trauma such as cut.

Hardy also pointed out that sepsis can be caused by other types of bacteria, including e coli and pneumococcus.

“Sepsis is not unique to staph,” he said. “It’s just a seriously ill person with bacteria in their blood stream.”

[Vaevictis]

Yo, BigRed! This has always confused me a bit. On the one hand, doctors are increasingly alarmed by the quantity of drug-resistant infections which are cropping up. On the other hand, they play a big part in being responsible for the problem.

It's the financial incentive in action.

Doctors who prescribe will attract the patients demanding prescriptions, and the attendant fee for the visit. And there's no financial disincentive. Nobody's tracking this and punishing over-prescribers, and there's no way to attach liability either -- you can't prove that any specific doctor's prescriptions were responsible for the antibiotic resistant strain in question.

Even if doctors know better, if they can pull down an extra $50k/yr for almost no effort, there's always going to be a certain portion that will do it anyway.