MRSA Medical Question?

Question

I recently took my 2 year old son to his pediatrician due to some insect bites he had received at daycare, and was he was perscribed an antihistamine like cream to also control itch(they healed). One of his bites had continued to get larger and hurt my son when touched. I took him It got very red and was engorged. I returned to the Drs office where he had a lab sent off w/ the fluid drained out of it. I just received a call saying it came back positive for MRSA. I looked into MRSA, but I am so scared that It is in his blood. He now is on an antibiotic which he must finish til its gone. I'm scared and I don't really understand what MRSA is doing. What does MRSA do to the human body?

Answer 1

MRSA stands for "methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus". Staphylococcus aureus is actually an extremely common species of bacterium. In fact, about a third of the people living in the US are colonized with this organism, meaning that it lives on their skin or in their nose without actually causing any illness. Infection usually happens in the setting of a break in the skin (e.g. a cut or scrape) but susceptibility to infection depends on several factors such as immunity and general state of health.

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus are strains of the bacterial species that have developed resistance to certain kinds of antibiotics (certain relatives of penicillin). These strains of bacteria have evolved over many years due to the increasing use of antibiotics. In fact, this is exactly why doctors do NOT prescribe antibiotics for illnesses that are likely viral and why it is very difficult when patients come in with a viral upper respiratory infection and demand antibiotics. Being resistant to methicillin DOES NOT mean that the bacteria are resistant to ALL antibiotics, but it does limit our choices to varying degrees.

Infection with bacteria (MRSA or otherwise) CAN spread from skin infections into the blood, but most of the time will not. People with infection in the blood are typically very sick and may have high fevers, chills, night sweats, nausea/vomiting, and lethargy. If your doctor suspects that the infection has spread to the blood, he would do a blood culture and start IV antibiotics. However, if your child does not have the systemic symptoms that I mentioned above, the infection is likely confined to his skin and should resolve with appropriate antibiotics. If you are ever concerned about how your son is doing, take him in to see a doctor. It is impossible to make any sort of diagnosis over the internet, and Yahoo! Answers is full of bad, inaccurate information.