Staph is getting a lot of press these days. With good reason. It's causing a lot of trouble.
Staph is a bacterium not a virus. It has always been around. You could culture it anywhere; house, yard, hospital, skin. There are many, many species of Staph, but the one we are talking about is Staphylococcus aureus--shortened to "Staph".
Within the Staph aureus species, different strains have varying degrees of resistance to antibiotics. Mostly from frequent exposure to antiobiotics. If you kill off all the Staph that are sensitive to penicillin, the only ones left are the ones resistant to penicillin. Survival of the fittest. Most Staph in the US has been resistant to penicillin for years.
MRSA stands for methicillin resistant Staph aureus. (methicillin is an antibiotic) the term was adopted because it helped doctors select which antibiotic to use. If it is methicillin resistant, don't use methicillin or it's relatives.
In the last 5-10 years, MRSA has been developing resistance to other antibiotics also. And the bad actor of Staph typically is an infection acquired while you are an in-patient of a hospital. These strains have been resistant to most antibiotics so are very tough to treat. Also these days if you are in the hospital you have either just had surgery, a baby or are very sick. If you aren't real sick, your insurance won't let you be there!
If you get a MRSA infection in a joint, (hip, knee, etc), you have a huge problem. Usually another surgery to drain or irrigate it. Weeks or months of IV antibiotics to fix it. If you get MRSA pneumonia when you are 85 in a hospital, already weak from heart disease, kidney failure or whatever put you in there, you have a potentially lethal situation.
Most of the routine skin infections you get from a cut or scrape will be Staph and depending where you live, they may well be MRSA. But at least for now, most community Staph infections can be treated with normal pills.
So what can you do?
First, don't take antibiotics you don't need. Wait out colds and respiratory infections. They are caused by viruses and antibiotics don't help anyway.
Second, if you get an open wound, wash it thoroughly, apply ointment and bandaid. It is a lot better to avoid an infection than have to treat it.
Third, if a minor infection does happen, try warm compresses or soaks. If it start to spread, streaks develop, or a lump starts to form, see your dr.
Sorry for the long post, but the topic is important enough to cover in depth.
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