SCIENCE IN THE NEWS DAILY
Vaccine Development: Man vs. MRSA
from Nature News
Over the years, Robert Daum has learned to respect his adversary. In 1995, he and his
co-workers at the University of Chicago children's hospital in Illinois were investigating
infections that had affected two dozen children in their emergency department.
Three children had fast-moving pneumonia. A fourth had an abscess the size of his fist buried
in the muscle of one buttock. In a fifth, the bacterium had infiltrated the bones of one foot.
The infections were resistant to many common antibiotics, including methicillin. To Daum's
surprise, the culprit was MRSA--methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus--a bacterium that was
thought to spread only among hospital inpatients.
But none of these kids had been to the hospital for months before becoming ill. Few
researchers were willing to accept the implications. Daum wrangled for 18 months with editors at
the Journal of the American Medical Association over a paper reporting the cases and
showing that this strain was dangerous, acquired in the community and differed genetically from
hospital strains.
Read more...
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