Wednesday, July 19, 2006

State watching for supergerms Supergerms that resist antibiotics are spreading in Arizona, sickening some patients for months and prompting health officials to step up prevention efforts. Doctors are urging patients to take extra precautions against spreading hard-to-treat infections, especially staph infections that break out in the skin but can spread to other parts of the body. It's not known if any deaths from superbacteria have occurred in the state. Deaths have occurred elsewhere, but Arizona officials are tracking only numbers of cases, not outcomes. The king of the bad bugs worrying infectious-disease doctors is MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureas. Although staph infections are common - the bacteria live inside many people's noses - antibiotic-resistant strains are multiplying. MRSA symptoms can range from skin boils to necrotizing fasciitis, also known as flesh-eating bacteria. The superbug outbreaks indicate that bacteria continue to gain resistance against conventional antibiotics, even as few new antibiotics are being developed. Patients suffer longer, and doctors are forced to turn to the most potent antibiotics available, which are more expensive and could speed up a bacterium's adaptive pace to those drugs. The bugs are affecting the lives and work practices of everyone on the front lines, from patients and doctors to hospitals and state health experts. 10:33:35 PM    comment []

Gila River Resort Offers Interpretive Talks & Tour As visitors wander, they get a feel for the people who were here long before the first Spanish or European explorers "discovered" the area. That is the intent of the subtle Pima and Maricopa designs and images found in every corner of the resort, says Ginger Sunbird Martin, who grew up in the Gila River community and now is the hotel's cultural concierge, the only such concierge in the nation, Wild Horse Pass officials say. 9:37:43 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2006 John Giacobbe.