Montreal's Own Superbug! - C.Difficile

MrBishop

MrBishop

Well-Known Member
Montreal Hospitals Confirm Virulent Infection "Superbug"
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June 05, 2004

36 patients in five Montreal hospitals have died from a virulent infection, officials confirmed Friday. A report in the Canadian Medical Association Journal suggests that number may be 89 and also an additional 10 in Calgary.

Clostridium difficile, the common cause of infectious diarrhea is connected to taking antibiotics in about 20 percent of cases diagnosed, according to researchers.

The infectious disease usually affects the colon with elderly and people weakened by other diseases most susceptible.


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Well....seems that Montreal has something else to worry about...as if the West Nile Virus wasn't bad enough. We've got the latest mutated strain of C.difficile...our own variant originating from here and visiting all of our hospitals. Here's the kicker...you get it from using antibiotics. It's resistant to other antibiotics, it lives in the body for weeks despite 3-4runs of antibiotics, it can survive outside the body (even in sunlight and after drying out)...and it's killing people. Oh Joy!!!
 
taptaptap *there is no place like home, there is no place like home*taptaptap
 
tonksy said:
damn bish...are you gonna ask me if i plan on breathing next?
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Well...consuming alcohol and breathing heavily go well together, while consuming alcohol and taking antibiotics, make for an interesting time :)
 
it is kinda scary...i remember when the worst thing that could happens whilst on antibiotics was yeast infections and compromised birth control.
 
tonksy said:
it is kinda scary...i remember when the worst thing that could happens whilst on antibiotics was yeast infections and compromised birth control.
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The same can be said for consuming alcohol :)

back to the thread. It's scary that it's so damn tough to kill, even outside the body. With the number of people that insist on going to work while sick, this thing's gonna spread...mighty quickly.
 
Clostridium difficile, the common cause of infectious diarrhea is connected to taking antibiotics in about 20 percent of cases diagnosed, according to researchers.
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Accurate, but a bit misleading. The infection is not directly caused by taking antibiotics. The improper use of antibiotics is actually the culprit.

Firstly, resistant strains of common infectious diseases are born because antibiotics are over prescribed, and patients often do not complete the full course. What this sets up is an accelerated natural selection process for strains that are resistant to antibiotics. When a patient doesn't take the full course of their prescription, the minimum levels and length of exposure of the antibiotic required to kill all the bacteria is not reached. Any bacteria that have a genetic resistance to the antibiotic (this is just a random mutation that gives the bacteria a survival advantage) will survive. These resistant bacteria will multiply and go on to infect other people, only this time, antibiotics will be less effective. Repeat this process often enough, and you get the “super bugs” that are resistant to multiple antibiotics. This is not the first time this kind of outbreak has happened, nor will it be the last. When I was doing my stage in microbiology at the Montreal Children’s, it was standard procedure to test for MRSA (Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus), another resistant strain.

Hospitals are vulnerable to these epidemics because, well, people are sick, and their immune systems are more prone to infection, thus creating a nice supply of hosts for the super bugs. Secondly, patients may on heavy courses of antibiotics to fight an infection unrelated to say, C. Difficile. The antibiotics will rid them of the initial infection, but because normal bacterial flora (which help to protect us from infections by disease causing bacteria by sheer force of numbers) is also destroyed, these patients now become vulnerable to the resistant strains of bacteria who have no competition from the normal flora for resources, and can happily infect these patients even in the presence of the antibiotic.
 
MrBishop said:

Well....seems that Montreal has something else to worry about...as if the West Nile Virus wasn't bad enough. We've got the latest mutated strain of C.difficile...our own variant originating from here and visiting all of our hospitals. Here's the kicker...you get it from using antibiotics. It's resistant to other antibiotics, it lives in the body for weeks despite 3-4runs of antibiotics, it can survive outside the body (even in sunlight and after drying out)...and it's killing people. Oh Joy!!!
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They're pretty sure that's what killed Isabel's mum last year.
 
Professur said:
They're pretty sure that's what killed Isabel's mum last year.
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Sad thing really... but she's not the last. Now I'm starting to feel paranoid wherever my digestion's not going so well.
 
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