Drug-Resistant Staph Tops Group's 'Hit List'

ByABC News via logo
February 28, 2006, 10:20 PM

March 1, 2006 — -- David Jackson still can't believe his ex-wife, Kimberly, is gone -- the victim of a deadly infection she contracted from an unsanitary pedicure.

"Something so stupid like a pedicure took her life," Jackson said. "She couldn't get it healed. No matter what she was doing, and the antibiotics just wasn't, wouldn't stop it."

Kimberly Jackson had contracted a staph infection -- a bacterial infection that can strike anywhere in the body, from the blood to the skin. Many of these bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics, and that has many doctors worried.

The Infectious Diseases Society of America today released a "hit list" of six drug-resistant "superbugs." No. 1 on that list is a potentially deadly strain of staph called MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus).

Dr. Tim Johnson, ABC News' medical editor, said that overuse of antibiotics had contributed to the growing number of infections that are resistant to drugs.

"We're seeing this drug-resistant strain now partly because of the use of antibiotics," Johnson said. "These bugs have a remarkable ability to mutate and develop resistance to whatever we throw at them."

Once confined to hospitals, dangerous staph infections are cropping up in many other places where people interact in close quarters -- schools, prisons and sports teams.

"It is definitely a growing problem," said Dr. John Francis of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "There's a risk of this bacteria that's commonly found in your skin to then be passed from one individual to another."

What's most alarming to health professionals is that as the bug mutates, it grows more resistant to the few antibiotics left that can still treat it.

"We desperately need more tools, because that's how we're going to stay ahead of this," said Dr. Victor Nizet of the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine.

Johnson said that some experts believe drug companies aren't devoting enough resources to research new antibiotics.