I’ve been watching the country go through the big MRSA “Gay Disease” scare like it did over HIV but at least this one seems to be taming down a little quicker and I’m even reading apologies by newspeople who started the scare. Yes, it is effecting the gay community, but it is far from being any kind of “gay” disease!! I even heard one local news report the other day describing MRSA as only being found in the gay community!!
MRSA is not selective and it is not some message from God that gays should suffer. Many, many people from all walks of life are suffering and it will continue to worsen. I am disappointed to hear so little about Phage Therapy being used for the treatment of MRSA boils but there is always hope for the future. I do see a lot about Phages being used for different things like they are being applied to luncheon meats to prevent dangerous growth of bacteria so hopefully the medical world will someday recognize their benefits to fight disease.

A new product for treating MRSA skin infections is going to be hitting the market in 2008. It is a line of products containing Manuka Honey brought to us by Honeymark International. Manuka Honey seems to be successful in destroying bacteria because of its ability to draw water out of the bacteria by osmosis. Bacteria requires water to survive. Manuka Honey has also been known to provide a protective barrier around wounds, therefore preventing infection.Manuka Honey is a special type of honey that has been found to have incredible healing qualities, primarily due to hydrogen peroxide and an antibacterial property called the Unique Manuka Factor or UMF. The best part is that Manuka Honey has been found to have no negative side effects.

A team from the John Innes Centre, that specialises in plant and microbial science, said they had proven that by taking a short stretch of DNA from a bacterium and delivering it with an existing antibiotic they could switch off drug resistance.
“The DNA sequence acts as a decoy, disrupting gene expression and blocking resistance,” Michael McArthur of the Norwich-based institute said. “We are putting genetic information directly into drugs.”
Commercially, the new approach could be attractive to drug manufacturers, since it may allow existing antibiotics to be patented as a new medicine when they are combined with a decoy. New science has a much better chance of becoming main stream if the pharmaceutical companies can make money off of it!!!!!

C Diff is moving quickly along the same path as MRSA. Dr. Bruce Hirsch, a specialist in infectious diseases at North Shore, said C. diff is an ancient bacterium. “C. diff can live in us without causing disease,” Hirsch explained, saying many people carry it naturally. “So having C. diff in us does not mean we have an infection. It is common in us just after we’re born.
“What we don’t have is the receptor for the toxin,” he said of the molecular key that unlocks C. diff’s toxin-spewing capacity. Newer, mutant C. diff is fully equipped with the receptor and is capable of boosting the amount of toxin produced. It is the toxin that makes C. diff lethal, causing potentially fatal intestinal inflammation.
C Diff and MRSA appear to be the tip of the iceberg of diseases that are going to emerge as Super bugs if not kept in check. And there is a new bad twist to C Diff. Although it is a bacteria found in the intestines naturally, this virulent strain has another nasty feature.
Alcohol-based hand sanitizers, commonly used in hospitals, can kill MRSA and other bacteria that contaminate the hands of health care workers, but are powerless against C. diff’s spores. Surfaces touched by C. diff patients must be cleaned frequently with bleach.
So be prepared for this war with microbes that is slated to do more damage than the war in Iraq has so far and could be the biggest killer we have faced.

I have found a simple explanation of what phage therapy is and how it works.
The phage virus attaches itself to the surface of the bacteria cell. It injects its DNA into the cell itself. The virus is alive, and this is how it reproduces. Within a just few minutes, the DNA becomes a phage factory, hijacking the bacteria’s own reproductive mechanism and turning out new copies of the virus, until they explode through the cell wall, killing the bacteria (such as MRSA) and releasing phages that rampage in search of other identical cells, and only those cells, until all the bacteria are gone.
Western medicine hasn’t paid much attention to phage therapy since the discovery of antibiotics but more and more interest is being generated about phage therapy as we begin to do battle with the superbugs that antibiotics have created.
Phage therapy is truly the way of the future if only the pharmaceutical companies will allow it into mainstream medicine but they will resist its induction because they cannot make the money marketing viruses that they do making the thousands of antibiotics that have created MRSA and other superbugs. Public education and demand will be what forces phage therapy back into western mainstream medicine.

Researchers at Cork Institute of Technology have revealed that they have discovered that a flower known as inula helenium kills MRSA bacteria.
Inula Helenium is a tall plant that grows wild in Cork and it blossoms in late summer. CIT also researched another plant, pulsatilla vulgaris, which also proved to be effective in killing MRSA. Extracts from both plants were tested on a group of 300 staphylococci and the inula helenium was 100% effective at killing the superbug.
The odd thing here is that I haven’t read yet about the world sitting up and noticing this. I just think we won’t hear a lot about potential cures that don’t enrich the pharmaceutical companies. Plants, silver, Phage Therapy, and other effective treatments seem to never make mainstream news. But I though the news belonged in my site.

Michael Otto and his colleagues at the federal Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton have shown that KRSA secretes a protein that pokes holes in one of the body’s main disease killing cells, destroying them. Also, individual MRSA bacteria know when their fellow super bugs are present in enough numbers to deliver maximum damage to the body’s immune cells and all strike at once thus winning the war. This is what gives CA MRSA its reputation for being flesh eating. The bacteria doesn’t even start making the PSM proteins that attack until it knows there are enough members of the CA MRSA army to win the war. This tells us that our super bug is what it is because it is super smart. Staph infections were the first to become immune to penicillin in the 1950’s, and then they were the first to become immune to the second generation antibiotic, methicillin.
Maybe a few of those saying we shouldn’t be overly afraid should look at this breaking news closely.
It is down right terrifying.

It is a sad thing to have won the war to enlighten this country about CA MRSA. Not that I won the war, the spread of the disease did that, but I was firing my gun anyway. This site has become redundant with all the news every day about MRSA now. Sadly, most of it is about school children coming down with it and schools closing across the country. I am going to devote myself more to Phage Therapy study and awareness now and let the news people who ignored me for over a year carry on now that it is the popular thing to do. Everything I know about MRSA is already in this site somewhere if anyone wants to read it. I’m out of here. God bless.

I have been reading about schools closing to disinfect and am wondering if this is the best way to spend money to combat MRSA. The bacterium are everywhere and easily carried by people and pets. All it takes to spread MRSA is for a positive person to touch their nose and then touch any surface and then someone else touch that spot and the infected person might not be and never et sick themselves with the disease. It seems money and time would be better spent to take more time to teach children to properly wash their hands, which is to wash them in warm soapy water for the length of time it takes to sing Happy Birthday, and also to install disinfecting lotion dispensers in the halls. I wrote an article earlier about a teacher’s aid who told me the school she teaches at rushes the kindergarteners through bathroom breaks often neglecting proper hand washing to save time. Changes in policies like these would be more effective and less intrusive and expensive than closing schools for ineffective sterilization, which seems rather like sensationalism.

They are installing antibacterial foam dispensers in Chicago’s Portage Schools in the hallways for students and staff to use. This is one of the best things I have read since all of the articles lately seem to advocate handwashing but none so far have mentioned exactly what thorough handwashing is. Again, wash hands and wrists with warm water and soap and wash for the length of time it takes to sing Twinkle Twinkle!