The Yellow Menace

As microbes start to learn defying the science behind antimicrobials, more superbugs are noted more and more. Let's look on what happens with superbug 'Streptococcus aureus.'

THIS minute, “bundle of grapes-looking” bacteria naturally resides on the mucous membranes of the body and on the human skin. Staphylococcus aureus (aureus is Latin for “yellow”) is present in around a third of any human population, with 20 percent being long-term carriers of this silent menace.

And it is very adaptable to antibiotic threats. Being so, it is one of the five most common causes of nosocomial infections, those diseases that we got for getting so sick and hospitalized.

The first cases of resistance to penicillin, the groundbreaking discovery of Alexander Fleming in 1928, appeared in 1947 (four years after mass production started in 1943).

So methicillin became the antibiotic of choice. But then reports of significant toxic effects on the kidney came out. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus then appeared (first detected in Great Britain in 1961). Since then the phenomenon became common in hospitals.

Oxacillin came out to take up the cudgels. But then new waves of resistant strains appeared. Half of all Aureus infections in the United States, for instance, are resistant to penicillin, methicillin, tetracycline and erythromycin, so that... [READ MORE]

This article appears in SunStar Cebu newspaper on 17 July 2012.

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