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Article: Doctors worry as drug-resistant staph infects more healthy people.
- Article from:
- Life Science Weekly
- Article date:
- October 19, 2004
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2004 OCT 19 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Flesh-eating bacteria cases, fatal pneumonia and life-threatening heart infections suddenly are popping up around the country, striking healthy people and stunning their doctors.
The cause? Staphylococcus aureus (staph), a bacteria better known for causing skin boils easily treated with standard antibiotic pills.
No more, say infectious disease experts, who increasingly are seeing these "super bugs", strains of staph unfazed by the entire penicillin family and other first-line drugs.
Until a few years ago, these drug-resistant infections were unheard of except in hospital patients, prison inmates and ...