New bug threat to fit and young

A SUPERBUG which is capable of killing healthy young people and resists treatment has been discovered in Scotland.

The bacterium causes potentially fatal pneumonia, even in young adults, is resistant to antibiotics and thrives outside hospitals, which are the normal breeding grounds for such harmful organisms.

Doctors and scientists have been alerted after the new strain of the MRSA superbug was discovered by several Scottish laboratories just as the flu ‘season’ gets underway.

The bug is capable of killing if it infects someone who has recently had flu. In these circumstances it can cause staphylococcal pneumonia, which kills a significant number of those who contract it.

A leading authority on drug-resistant MRSA bacteria warned last night that their continued spread could see outbreaks in Scotland which are almost impossible to cure.

Brian Spratt, professor of molecular microbiology in the infectious disease epidemiology department of Imperial College, London, said: "MRSA is clearly a very serious public health threat."

Scottish doctors and microbiologists are already battling with MRSA - methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus - a bacterium which causes wound infections in hospital patients and is resistant to most commonly-used antibiotics.

Cases in Scotland now stand at about 900 a year, although latest figures show the rate of infection has been fairly steady for the last two years.

But in other countries a new threat has emerged: MRSA which has an extra gene capable of producing a toxin, called PVL, which attacks the body’s white blood cells.

It usually causes boils and abscesses but in some cases, following flu, it can lead to pneumonia and several people have died as a result in countries including France.

The strains involved have also been found in people who have had no contact with hospitals.

The Scottish Centre for Infection and Environmental Health (SCIEH) has now issued a warning that with the flu season approaching, microbiologists should be aware of the existence of the PVL bugs in Scotland.

They have been identified over the past six weeks by the Scottish MRSA Reference Laboratory in Glasgow, in samples from several other NHS labs.

The areas of Scotland where the samples came from have not been named, but the germs have already caused small outbreaks of skin abscesses in healthcare staff.

In France, of eight recorded cases of pneumonia caused by bugs with the PVL gene, six were fatal.

Symptoms include fever, rapid heart rate and coughing up blood and, apart from maintaining high standards of hygiene, there is little the public can do to avoid the new strain.

Danger arises if doctors do not realise they might be dealing with an antibiotic-resistant strain and therefore give drugs which have no effect.

Spratt, a member of the advisory group on dangerous pathogens, said the increasing incidence of antibiotic-resistant strains meant there could soon be a serious untreatable outbreak of them in Scotland.

The main worry is that MRSA with the ability to cause fatal diseases will also become resistant to Vancomycin on a wide scale, leaving doctors with no drug weapon to combat it.

The first Vancomycin-resistant bugs were found in the US this year and the fear is they are spreading.

Spratt said: "The question we’ve been asking for 10 years is, ‘What if we lose Vancomycin?’ The possibility clearly exists that we will start seeing MRSA outbreaks where we will find it very difficult to cure the infections. There is an alarm bell ringing that that sort of event is significantly closer."

Professor Hugh Pennington, head of the department of medical microbiology at Aberdeen University, said: "This is something we have to keep a very sharp eye on. People who have been getting this tend to be young and healthy and are last on the list for flu jabs. But it’s not something people should panic about. It’s still uncommon and some patients do pull through."

The scientists who identified the new MRSA strain last night sought to played down the risk it posed to the public.

The reference laboratory’s head, Professor Curtis Gemmell, said: "The only potential worry is that if somebody is unfortunate enough to pick up one of these strains after flu it does sometimes predispose them to staphylococcal pneumonia. But it’s a series of chances."

Doomsday Scenario for public health

GERMS which can withstand antibiotics have become perhaps the biggest ‘doomsday’ story in public health, overturning decades of complacency.

In 1969 the US surgeon general, William H Steward, claimed he was ready to "close the book" on infectious disease because of the number of effective drugs and vaccines which had been developed.

But by 1996 the World Health Organisation was claiming that humans "stand on the brink of a global crisis in infectious diseases".

Much of the blame in the West has fallen on the overuse of antibiotics. Bacteria in particular have been highly successful in evolving resistance to them. The more the drugs are used, the more resistant strains spring up and spread.

Natural resistance developed by mutation as bacteria’s DNA was copied when they multiplied.

With some antibiotics, only one in every one thousand million individual bacteria developed resistance.

But they survived and passed on their genes quickly because of their rapid reproduction.

Treating patients infected by a bacterium resistant to one drug requires a different drug. But that can lead to "multi-drug" resistance as the resistant bugs mutate to withstand the second antibiotic as well.

Meanwhile, some scientists believe some bugs are even becoming resistant to widely-used disinfectants.

Public health experts now refer to effective antibiotics as ‘super-valuable’ drugs which should only be used when essential.