Andrea a healthy 22-year old college
student a high school gymnast gets
swollen sore on her right wrist the
pain is mild but it doesn't seem to improve
What she thinks as a simple
spider bite turns out to be a challenge
and an immediate threat to be resolved
by the Public Health Department
stay tuned to know more
Andrea lives with her mother and a younger sister
who also happens to be a high school gymnast
she is trying to work for
her psychology class but is having a
hard time because a red swollen sore on
her right wrist is making typing difficult
"Why won't this spider bite heal"? She wonders "it's been there for days
she makes an appointment with her doctor so that she can show him the now painful lesion
although Andrea doesn't have a
fever she does have an elevated white
blood cell count that indicates a
bacterial infection
Andrea's doctor suspects that this
isn't a spider bite at all
but a Staph infection
He prescribes a beta-lactam antibiotics
called CEPHALOSPORIN
Now, what is a staph..?
Staph is the common name for
Staphylococcus aureus bacteria
The name aureus derived from the word Aurum comes from you guessed it due to the
golden yellow colored colonies formed by the bacteria which are carried on the skin
of about 30% of the human population
Although Andrea is diligent about taking an antibiotic as prescribed she doesn't seem to be improving
After three days the lesion on her wrist is even larger than before and is now draining a yellow pus
Andrea develops a fever
her mother insists that she calls a doctor to tell him about the latest developments
Now, why does Andrea's infection persist after her treatment..?
The Staphylococcus aureus bacterium responsible for Andrea's infection is
resistant to the Beta-lactam antibiotics
prescribed by her doctor concerned about
what his patient is telling him
Andrea's doctor calls the local hospital to
let them know he is sending a patient over
A nurse swabs Andrea's wound and sends it to the hospital lab for culturing the culture shows that Andrea's infection is
caused by MRSA stands for
methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus
MRSA produces beta-lactamase an enzyme that destroys beta-lactam antibiotics
The attending physician surgically
drains the pus from the sore on
Andrea's wrist but how does the normal
bacteria which usually falls like flies
when treated with an antibiotic develop
resistance against it
Mutations develop randomly in bacteria
some mutations are lethal some have no
effect and some may be beneficial these
kind of provides superpowers to them
once these mutations develop the
offspring of the mutated parent cells
also carry the same mutations because
they have an advantage in presence of
the antibiotic bacteria that are
resistant to antibiotics soon outnumber
those that are susceptible to the
antibiotic therapy the widespread use of
antibiotics selectively allows the
resistant bacteria to grow whereas the
susceptible bacteria are killed
eventually almost the entire population
of bacteria is resistant to the
antibiotic
The emergency department physician prescribes a different antibiotic VANOMYCIN in which will kill
the MRSA in Andrea's wrist she also
explains to Andrea what MRSA is and why
it's important that they find out where
Andrea acquired the potentially lethal bacteria
what can an emergency
department physician tell Andrea about MRSA
The first MRSA was
health care-associated MRSA (HA-MRSA)
transmitted between staff and patients
in healthcare settings
In the 1990s infections by a genetically
different strain
community associated MRSA
(CA-MRSA) emerged as a major cause of
skin disease in the United States
CA-MRSA enters the skin abrasions from
environmental surfaces or other people
Andrea has never been hospitalized
before now so they are able to rule out
the hospital as the source of infection
her college courses are all online so
she didn't contact MRSA at the
University either
then how did she get the infection
the local health
department sends someone to her family
home to swab for the bacteria there MRSA is isolated from Andrea's living room sofa
but how did it get there
after speaking with the family
the representatives from the health department knowing that clusters of CA-MRSA
infections have been seen among athletes
such as swabbing the mats for MRSA
Andrea's sister although not infected
transferred the bacteria from her skin
to the sofa where Andrea laid her arm
the point to be noted here is that a person can carry MRSA on the skin
without becoming infected. The bacteria entered through a scratch on Andrea's wrist
The use of antibiotics without a medical
prescription is quite a prevalent habit
among us. To be frank even the medical
health department isn't very cautious
about it. These practices have and will
for sure elevate our already existing problems to a whole another level
So thank you for
watching this video
will be coming up
with the new content soon enough until
then bye bye take care..
