More Drug-Resistance Infections to be Identified

Drug-resistant infections, including the headline-grabbing MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), will continue to be a top concern for health-care providers in 2008, says a University of Alabama health expert.

“We will identify more drug-resistant organisms, and they will have a greater impact than they’ve had in the past,” says Dr. John C. Higginbotham, associate dean for research and health policy at UA’s College of Community Health Sciences. “With MRSA, we’re seeing more community-acquired MRSA than in the past.”

Higginbotham points out, however, that these drug-resistant strains are not necessarily stronger than previously known infections; they simply have become resistant to a specific first-line drug, such as methicillin. Other first- and second-line drugs can work to fight these diseases.

Of course, efforts to curb these strains will increase though prevention, he says – things as simple as washing hands and other steps to better hygiene. “It’s very easy to try to reduce the incidence of MRSA by not sharing towels or not coming into contact with it,” Higginbotham says. “Then you don’t have to worry about getting additional first-line or second-line drugs.”

On another front, Higginbotham warns that because of globalization, a worldwide pandemic, like the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, might be lying on the horizon – if not in 2008, then some time in the future.

“Some form of pandemic influenza or other pandemic contagious disease is highly probable,” he says. “It will be because we are such a global society.”

Should such an outbreak occur, however, Higginbotham says the world is much-better prepared to set off the warning bells and control it, especially after the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) scare in China and Canada in 2003.

“Now we are much better equipped worldwide than when we were with SARS,” Higginbotham says. “The World Health Organization has undertaken a lot of activities to identify such outbreaks in collaboration with many nations. Actually, even though SARS, from a global standpoint, didn’t have that high an impact, it served as a warning and a test and an improvement for our systems for dealing with pandemics.”