| History of MRSA Infection |
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History of MRSA Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has a pretty recent history. Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928 and the antibiotic began to be deployed on a large scale to fight all types of bacterial infections in the 1940s. However as is the trend, drug resistance became a problem with penicillin and its related family in the late 1950s. Other antibiotics like erythromycin, streptomycin, and tetracycline also failed to treat staph infections in those years. Methicillin was introduced in 1959 and initially it was successful in treating penicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infections. However in 1961, the dreaded nightmare happened. Methicillin resistance was acquired by Staphylococcus aureus with the first cases being reported in the United Kingdom. Hospitals in eastern Australia were the first to report MRSA outbreaks in the 1970s. In the next decade MRSA had acquired nightmarish proportions in hospitals and many European facilities were struggling to deal with staph infections. The jump of MRSA from hospital settings to community settings is not so well-documented although recent cases of sporadic outbreaks in prison inmates means that healthcare workers will now be hard-pressed to understand the dynamics of the superbug. Thus far researchers have managed to isolate at least 11 MRSA clones as per Mark C. Enright, D. Ashley Robinson, Gaynor Randle, Edward J. Feil, Hajo Grundmann, and Brian G. Spratt , PNAS 2002 99: 7687-7692; published online on , 10.1073/pnas.122108599. To learn more read "Evolutionary history of MRSA" here |