***Note from the inventor of the Healthy Handle ***
At Dandy Enterprises we are constantly scanning all sources to get a picture of health related problems that can be contracted from contaminated surfaces. This new information page will be updated regularly for your viewing. Each story will be added to our Germ Facts page. Please let us know if you have any comments.
Note from Al Dandy: One major change I'm noticing about the CDC reports is that they are not mentioning the use of wipes or lotions as much as in the past. These chemicals have been around for 30 years and yet our illness rate continues to rise. I believe facts and education will support the use of non-chemical solutions for contamination. We at Dandy Enterprises and our many customers believe the Healthy Handle best addresses contaminated shopping cart handles.
4/4/08 update
Superbugs resistant to everything - Doctors running out of treatments
Disease/Infection News
Published: Tuesday, 1-Apr-2008
Doctors are running out of treatments for today's trauma victims and critically ill patients because of infections due to drug resistant microbes even after resorting to using medicines thrown out 20 years ago because of severe side effects, scientists heard at the Society for General Microbiology's 162nd meeting being held this week at the Edinburgh International conference centere.
"Doctors in many countries have gone back to using old antibiotics that were abandoned 20 years ago because their toxic side effects were so frequent and so bad", says Professor Matthew Falagas from the Alfa Institute of Biomedical Sciences in Athens, Greece and Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston Massachusetts. "But superbugs like Acinetobacter have challenged doctors all over the world by now becoming resistant to these older and considered more dangerous medicines."
"Even colistin, a polymyxin type antibiotic discovered 60 years ago, has recently been used as a salvage remedy to treat patients with Acinetobacter infections", says Professor Falagas. "And it was successful for a while, but now it occasionally fails due to recent extensive use that has caused the bacterial to become resistant, leading to problem superbugs which are pan-drug resistant, in other words resistant to all available antibiotics."
The Greek researchers have also shown, in new data analyses that Acinetobacter is a more serious threat than previously thought - it doesn't just cause severe infections, it kills many more patients than doctors had realised. Acinetobacter can cause pneumonia, skin and wound infections and in some cases meningitis.
The scientists have also identified a whole range of drug resistant strategies being used by the bacteria, including the production of compounds which can inactivate the drug treatments, cell pumps that can bail out the drug molecules from inside bacterial cells making them ineffective, and mutating the drug target sites making the drug molecules miss or fail to latch onto the specific regions of the bacterial cells that they were aiming for.
"There have already been severe problems with critically ill patients due to Acinetobacter baumannii infections in various countries", says Matthew Falagas. "In some cases we have simply run out of treatments and we could be facing a pandemic with important public health implications."
Community-acquired MRSA spreads
Disease/Infection News
Published: Tuesday, 1-Apr-2008
Drug resistant hospital superbugs like MRSA have been kept under control in Denmark for more than 30 years.
But the latest reports say that in the last 10 years MRSA cases have risen 10 times as new strains of bacterial with resistence genes spread through the community, scientists heard today (Tuesday 1 April 2008) at the Society for General Microbiology's 162nd meeting being held this week at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre.
"The new threat is MRSA transmission int he community, without infected people visiting a hospital or care home themselves, where they might be expected to risk contact with drug resistant bacterial", says Professor Robert Skov from the Statens Serum Institut in Copenhagen, Denmark.
"The spread of community acquired MRSA among the general population creates a huge problem for us", says Professor Skov. "Some infected people will inevitably be hospitalizesed themselves, or visit friends and relatives who are patients in hospitals. Or they could be health care workers ans so will increase the risk of outbreaks of these new types of MRSA. These community strains have evolved independantly of the hospital strains and so present a whole new series of problems for control and treatment."
Staphylococcus aureeus is common and usually harmless, it is carried by 25-40% of the population on their skin and in their noses. But if it gets inside the body through an injury, cut, surgical operation or through a catheter it can cause infections. These infections are often mild, causing boils or pimples, but in some cases they may develop into more serious infections affecting the bloodstream, joints and bones.
These serious infections were first brought under control with the discovery of penicillin, but as resistance to antibiotics has spread, new and dangerous superbug strains such as MRSA have emerged. These are far more difficult to treat and can cause life-threatening infections, especially in patients with impaired immune systems or low white blood cell counts.
"We have managed to hold the frequency of MRSA cases down to under one percent in Denmark for over 30 years. But in 1997 we recognised the first cases of community acquired MRSA, a new strain independent of hospital and nursing home contacts, in a young adult and two families in a rural town", says Professor Skov. "From the families we traced the superbug being transmitted through a kindergarten, a school, a factory and a farm. Between 1999 and 2006 the number of community acquired MRSA infections increased from 11 to 175 a year, making up more than 22% of all MRSA infections, as a rising proportion."
The Danish scientists found that the most common method of superbug transmission was from one family member to another, with children and younger adults most affected. And many of the infected families had relations in other countries with a high incidence of MRSA in the population.
The Danish health system responded by introducing new national guidelines in November 2006 designed to prevent MRSA spreading, including increased barrier precautions and isolation nursing in both hospitals and nursing homes. The guidelines appear to be successful, as a small decrease has been observed. The results of these experiences, which have helped to stop the rising epidemic of MRSA, will be published in health journals shortly.