Unstoppable Staph Virus Makes First Appearance In U.S.

A staph germ that has resisted medicine’s drug of last resort has shown up for the first time in the United States and may soon be unstoppable, the government said Thursday.

“The timer is going off,” said Dr. William Jarvis, a medical epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We were concerned it would emerge here, it has emerged here and we are concerned we’re going to see it popping up in more places.”

A strain of staphylococcus aureus bacteria found in a Michigan man in July showed an intermediate level of resistance to vancomycin - one step from immunity to the drug, the CDC said. The CDC and the Michigan department of health would not identify the man or say where he lives.

The patient, who suffered kidney failure, had been taking vancomycin for a year and a half for a recurring infection from an abdominal catheter used for kidney dialysis. He was successfully treated with a combination of drugs, including vancomycin, Jarvis said.

The Michigan discovery came three months after a similar resistant strain was found in Japan.

In May, the CDC reported that a 4-month-old Japanese infant developed staph from a boil after heart surgery. That strain of staph also showed an intermediate resistance to vancomycin, and the baby was treated with other drugs.

U.S. hospitals were alerted to watch for the strain here.

“Now that you have two in such a short time, there will be heightened concern,” said Richard Schwalbe, director of clinical microbiology at the University of Maryland.

Staph bacteria are the No. 1 cause of hospital infections. They are blamed for about 13 percent of the nation’s 2 million hospital infections each year, according to the CDC. Overall, the 2 million infections kill 60,000 to 80,000 people.

The bacteria can collect on clothing, blankets, walls and medical equipment. Hospital workers can pass them on by hand, and they can cling to tubes inserted into the body.

To combat their spread, many hospitals across the country have restricted use of their most potent antibiotics and isolated their sickest patients.

Dr. Robert Haley, chief of epidemiology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, said there’s no reason hospitals can’t eradicate resistant staph.

“These are unique, special strains that can be eradicated,” said Haley, former chief of the CDC’s hospital infections branch. “There needs to be aggressive surveillance in hospitals.”

For patients, the rise of drug-resistant germs means that the medicine they get for their infection may not make them better, forcing doctors to switch to one or more of the 100 antibiotics now on the market.

However, many fear the time is growing near when there will be no alternative antibiotic to turn to.

Penicillin was a wonder drug that killed staph when it became available in 1947. Within a decade, some strains grew resistant.