MRSA Blows Up Defender Cells
Posted on November 12, 2007 Comments (3)
Superbug succeeds by blowing up defender cells, scientists learn
While only 14 percent of serious MRSA infections are the community associated kind, they have drawn attention in recent months with a spate of reports in schools, including the death of a 17-year-old Virginia high school student. Both hospital-associated and community-associated MRSA contained genes for the peptides. But their production was much higher in the CA-MRSA, the researchers said.
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The compounds first cause inflammation, drawing the immune cells to the site of the infection, and then destroy those cells. The research was conducted in mice and with human blood in laboratory tests. Within five minutes of exposure to the peptides from CA-MRSA, human neutrophils showed flattening and signs of damage to their membrane, researchers said. After 60 minutes, many cells had disintegrated completely.
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The compounds first cause inflammation, drawing the immune cells to the site of the infection, and then destroy those cells. The research was conducted in mice and with human blood in laboratory tests. Within five minutes of exposure to the peptides from CA-MRSA, human neutrophils showed flattening and signs of damage to their membrane, researchers said. After 60 minutes, many cells had disintegrated completely.
“This elegant work helps reveal the complex strategy that S. aureus has developed to evade our normal immune defenses,” Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, NIAID director, said in a statement. “Understanding what makes the infections caused by these new strains so severe and developing new drugs to treat them are urgent public health priorities.”
Related: MRSA Vaccine Shows Promise – Entirely New Antibiotic Developed
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October 29th, 2008 @ 8:26 am
“A study on the St. Louis Rams published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2003 found that during the 2003 football season, there were eight MRSA infections among five of the 58 Rams players…”
March 1st, 2009 @ 11:32 am
[…] – Deadly Bacteria Take Hold – CDC Urges Increased Effort to Reduce Drug-Resistant Infections – MRSA Blows Up Defender Cells – posts on antibiotics by curiouscat Tags: Antibiotics, Health Care, Life Science, […]
February 27th, 2010 @ 3:47 pm
[…] that in some places so many are dying from this, because we have shown here in Norway that Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus [MRSA] can be controlled, and with not too much effort,” said Jan Hendrik-Binder, Oslo’s MRSA […]