MRSA superbug becoming stronger due to antibiotics, study reveals

MRSA or Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus is defined by the Mayo Clinic as an infection "caused by a type of staph bacteria that's become resistant to many of the antibiotics used to treat ordinary staph infections." According to the CDC, about one out of three people carry staph in their nose, but do not have the illness, and two out of 100 people have the MRSA infection.

A new study coming from researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California have revealed that the use of beta-lactam antibiotics could make the MRSA infection worse, the Pharmaceutical Journal reports. The researchers used a mouse model to see how beta-lactams cause increased inflammation by inducing the resistance gene mecA.

Researchers gave the mice a high level of MRSA bacteria to cause an infection, then administered beta-lactam antibiotics as treatment. The researchers found that the antibiotic made the infection worse, but according to lead researcher Sabrina Muller, "How that translates to human infection is less clear."

John Coia, director of the Scottish Microbiology Reference Laboratories, who was not involved in the study, commented, "MRSA exposed to beta-lactam antibiotics may have an increased deleterious effect on the host immune response to the infection when compared with that of methicillin-sensitive Staphylococcus aureus (MSSA), or MRSA which has not been exposed to beta-lactams."

"This finding may partly explain the association of MRSA with greater morbidity and mortality than MSSA, and puts forward a biological mechanism for this observation," he said.

The Huffington Post reports that according to study author Dr. George Liu, "Our findings underscore the urgent need to improve awareness of MRSA and rapidly diagnose these infections to avoid prescribing antibiotics that could put patients' lives at risk."

"In situations where there is a lot of infection, this highly aggressive response can cause extensive inflammation and tissue damage, effectively making the consequences of the infection worse," he explained.

According to Medical News Today, the MRSA infection can be obtained through direct contact with an infected wound or by sharing personal items that have come in contact with infected skin. People in crowded places, or athletes, school children, and military personnel living in barracks, and confined patients at hospitals have a higher risk for contracting the infection.

About 80,000 invasive infections and 11,000 related deaths are linked to MRSA infection every year. According to researchers, "It is one of the biggest antibiotic-resistant pathogens in the U.S."