MRSA Head and Neck Infections spreading to healthy kids in U.S.

Atlanta, Georgia, United States, 20th January : There has been a significant rise in antibioticdefine-resistant head and neck infections in pediatric patients between 2001 and 2006, reveals the latest study.

With rates of dangerous drug-resistant MRSA infections almost doubling in the six years among American children, it seems to have become a “major public health problem”, according to a health expert. Earlier, it was a cause for concern in hospitals, nursing homes and other health-care settings only, taking into its grip, the weak patients. However, almost 60 percent of the MRSA infections found in the study were in healthy children outside the hospitals which have sent warning signals for health department to take immediate steps.

Being resistant to drugs and hence difficult to treat, the strain is called Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the deadly MRSA infections affect 94-thousand Americans each year and nearly 19-thousand of them die from the disease.

The study published in the January issue of “The Archives of Otalarynogology-Head and Neck Surgery” found 21,009 pediatric head and neck infections caused by staph germs were noted in the years 2001 through 2006. With rising numbers of skin infections in children, the percentage of those affected almost doubled, going to 28 percent from almost 12 percent. It can easily spread in the community through direct skin-to-skin contact or contact with surfaces contaminated with germs from cuts and other open wounds.

Dr. Steven E. Sobol, the co-author of the study and director of the department of pediatric otolaryngology at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta said, “In most parts of the United States, there's been an alarming rise. We certainly found that the emergence of resistant staph head and neck infections in pediatric settings is on the rise,” felt Dr. Sobol.

The researchers reviewed data regarding pediatric head and neck infections that occurred at more than 300 hospitals between 2001 and 2006 nationwide. Nearly one-third of MRSA infections affected the ears while 28 percent attacked the nasal and sinusdefine regions. Head and neck infections accounted for nearly 14 percent of the total MRSA infections.

Sobol felt there was no need to panic, yet. “I don't want to generate panic,” he said. “And really, there's no reason for parents and children to change their lives. Reducing risk for infection is all about common sense and practicing normal hygienic measures, such as encouraging children to wash their hands and avoid contact with other ill children in crowded situations.”

“But it's also important that pediatricians recognize the importance of this and suspect the possibility among children who don't respond to normal measures taken to deal with a cold or infection,” Sobol said. “And certainly, when a normal infection or cold seems worse than a parent would expect it to be, then parents should seek medical attention from their pediatrician quickly. Don't panic. Just be aware.”

Nicknamed MRSA, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus can cause dangerous, life-threatening invasive infections with inappropriate use of antibiotics seems to have complicated the problem, resulting in an increase in the recent cases, believe researchers.

U.S. researchers called on doctors to become more judicious in prescribing antibiotics. They suggested that doctors should prescribe antibiotics only when they will do some good and that too, only after conducting careful testing of head and neck infections.