By David Briggs

Brian Smith, Missouri’s no-nonsense wrestling coach who still mixes it up on the mats, is not someone who scares easily.

But even Smith’s wife has raised an eyebrow over his near-obsessive fight against one microscopic opponent: MRSA, the potentially fatal skin infection.

Before the Tigers’ daily wrestling practices, no space on campus is cleaner than the high and windowless 6,240-square foot room on the fourth floor of the Hearnes Center. The mats are disinfected daily and cleaned every three months with an antimicrobial concentrate. Gear and mopheads are washed after every workout at temperatures 140 degrees or higher. An oversize fan was installed to circulate the air and, before entering practice, wrestlers step onto a pad saturated with cleaning solution.

The locker room? Professionally sterilized and outfitted with the latest antibacterial soaps.

“We’re fanatical about it,” said Smith, who receives e-mail alerts on national cases of MRSA. “I probably do more than most coaches do, but we’ve had issues with skin diseases and MRSA scares me.”

It has been six years since an MRSA outbreak among the St. Louis Rams raised widespread awareness of the one-time hospital superbug’s incursion into athletic settings. But at Missouri, and schools across the country, the battle to find the most effective ways to combat the flesh-eating bacteria resistant to many antibiotics is stronger than ever.

In the breakneck world of modern college athletics, Missouri’s trainers and coaches are increasingly asking athletes to hold up and practice better hygiene habits while searching for new technology to fortify training facilities.

The wrestling and football teams, for instance, have recently begun using a product called Hibiclens. The cleanser, a long-time staple in operating rooms now commercially available, claims to actively kill 38 types of bacteria for six hours.

Smith said his program has not had a case of MRSA. Head athletic trainer Rex Sharp said there “more than likely” has been a MRSA incident at MU, but there haven’t been numerous problems.

“We’ve just managed it well,” he said.

Missouri is fighting to keep it this way. The last decade has shown the dangerous possibilities when open wounds, skin-to-skin contact and moist locker room conditions mix with a deadly — and evolving — strain of staph.

MRSA, or Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, was once relegated mostly to hospital settings and the chronically ill with weak immune systems inundated by batches of antibiotics. Not that locker rooms had been strangers to staph. About one in three healthy people carry staph on their skin or in their noses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the bacteria can lie in wait for years.

Infections, however, were easily treated. Only when a mutated variety of staph began widely penetrating the general population about a decade ago did concern emerge.

In the sporting ecosystem, MRSA steadily became a hot-button issue. Infections, which upon entering the bloodstream can attack any organ or tissue, were ending careers.

Ricky Lannetti, a 21-year-old senior wide receiver at Division III Lycoming College in Pennsylvania, died from MRSA on Dec. 6, 2003. Washington Redskins defensive lineman Brandon Noble nearly had his leg amputated after contracting MRSA in 2005. And Cleveland Browns center LeCharles Bentley, a prized free-agent acquisition in 2006, has not played since a knee injury suffered during his first training camp led to a life-threatening staph infection that ate away the tissue in his knee.

An NFL survey revealed there have been 93 cases of MRSA since 2002, including eight among five Rams players in 2003. The study reflects a broader trend. According to a 2007 study conducted by the CDC, cases of MRSA treated at hospitals have more than doubled over the past six years, from 127,000 in 1999 to 278,000 in 2005. Deaths increased from 11,000 to 17,000.

Sharp believes MU was on the vanguard of the collegiate fight against MRSA, largely because of his service on the College and University Athletic Trainers’ Committee. Before the group’s annual convention in January 2005, Sharp knew little about this lurking threat. But when the meetings highlighted MRSA and ABC’s “Primetime” news show descended on the meetings in Louisville, he knew something needed to be done.

“We had always been good with wounds and been careful,” Sharp said. “But we became a little more proactive.”

Trainers started to immediately cleanse and dress even the smallest turf burns, while the football locker room was professionally cleaned. Sharp and his staff also preached better hygiene practices: No sharing towels or razors. Wear clean clothes. And shower, shower, shower.

“I’m an old man, and back in the day when we played, we showered,” Sharp said. “Now guys, they get done with their workouts and if they have to go to class, they just jump in their cars. We want to make sure we hit them as much as we can.”

Mike Harbert, who works for a medical marketing group in St. Louis, said 25 colleges in Missouri are using Hibiclens to fight MRSA. And Hickman wrestling Coach J.D. Coffman said his team takes the threat seriously.

Besides standard measures such as disinfecting the mats each day, Coffman encourages wrestlers to cut their fingernails short — MRSA can enter the body even through a small scratch. He also doesn’t want the tough-minded to shy from medical attention.

“The biggest thing is keeping them informed,” Coffman said.

Nobody in town takes the threat more seriously than Smith. At a recent Missouri youth camp, he wondered if he put too much disinfecting concentrate on the mats. The solution was burning the wrestlers.

But he knew one thing.

“Those mats were definitely clean,” he said, laughing.

Keeping them that way means everything. Nothing can kill a camp business faster than an outbreak of skin infections. Nothing can undermine a team’s success — and recruiting — like a bacteria-polluted facility.

Nothing consumes Smith’s attention more.

“My wife says I’m crazy,” Smith said. “But, hey, I’m careful.”

Reach David Briggs at dbriggs@columbiatribune.com.

On The Net : Columbia Tribune

MONDAY, Jan. 19 (HealthDay News) — Antibiotic-resistant infections around the head and neck are on the rise among American children, a new report indicates.

The finding suggests that tougher strains of the bacteria Staphylococcus aureus — referred to as MRSA because of their resistance to the antibiotic methicillin — are moving beyond the traditional confines of hospitals and into the community at large.

“We certainly found that the emergence of resistant staph head and neck infections in pediatric settings is on the rise,” said study co-author Dr. Steven E. Sobol, director of the department of pediatric otolaryngology at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta.

Sobol and his colleagues reported the findings in the January issue of the Archives of Otolaryngology Head & Neck Surgery.

The building threat to children compounds a trend toward more community-based MRSA infections previously observed among prison, nursing home, and chronically ill patient populations, the researchers noted.

In the latest study, the authors reviewed data concerning pediatric infections that had been collected between 2001 and 2006 in a national database that amasses anti-microbial drug resistance test results from labs working for more than 300 hospitals across the country.

The research team found that of the more than 21,000 infections that had occurred among children during the study period, almost 22 percent were resistant to the antibiotic methicillin. Overall, MRSA head and neck infection rates had more than doubled, from about 12 percent to just over 28 percent.

About one-third of MRSA infections affected the ears, while about 28 percent impacted the nasal and sinus regions. Head and neck MRSA infections accounted for about 14 percent of the total.

Sobol stressed, however, that the apparent rising MRSA risk to children is not yet cause for alarm.

“I don’t want to generate panic,” he said. “And really, there’s no reason for parents and children to change their lives. Reducing risk for infection is all about common sense and practicing normal hygienic measures, such as encouraging children to wash their hands and avoid contact with other ill children in crowded situations.”

“But it’s also important that pediatricians recognize the importance of this and suspect the possibility among children who don’t respond to normal measures taken to deal with a cold or infection,” he said. “And certainly, when a normal infection or cold seems worse than a parent would expect it to be, then parents should seek medical attention from their pediatrician quickly. Don’t panic. Just be aware.”

“Meanwhile, the underlying cause for the rise in pediatric infections is the subject of ongoing study at our institution, because we don’t yet know exactly why it’s occurring,” Sobol acknowledged. “But we suspect is that it’s due to a combination of factors.”

Dr. Philip Tierno, director of clinical microbiology and immunology at New York University Medical Center, agreed.

“On the one hand, it could be that physicians might be less cautious in their use of antibiotics when it comes to children,” he noted. “This is even though the American Pediatric Association has really come out strongly for physicians to be careful with administration of antibiotics to children. It also could, in part, be that we’re simply monitoring case trends better than we had in the past, and so we’re finding it in greater numbers among children than before.”

But Tierno hypothesized that MRSA is simply on the rise outside traditional hospital settings.

“I suspect,” added Tierno, “that the primary reason children might be more likely to come down with a MRSA in the community is that the community is now a reservoir for antibiotic-resistant organism, whereas before it was primarily just the hospital. And so, children just reflect that shift as a significant part of the community.”

More information

For more on MRSA, visit :

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

SOURCES : Steven E. Sobol, M.D., director, department of pediatric otolaryngology, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta; Philip Tierno, M.D., Ph.D., director, clinical microbiology and immunology, New York University Langone Medical Center, and author, The Secret Life of Germs and Protect Yourself Against Bioterrorism; January 2009, Archives of OtolaryngologyHead & Neck Surgery

Staphylococcus bacteria – often called “staph” – are commonly carried on the skin or in the noses of healthy people without causing an infection. But in some cases, staph bacteria can cause illnesses ranging from minor skin infections resembling pimples or boils to serious infections of open wounds or the bloodstream.

MRSA is a type of staph that is resistant to certain antibiotics. Although it can potentially be serious, MRSA is treatable with appropriate medical care.

“This is not a ‘superbug’ thing,” says Chris Nyquist, MD, an infectious diseases specialist at The Children’s Hospital. “We’ve been seeing this for a long time, and it’s an evolution of these bacteria to develop a resistance pattern. We know how to treat the infection when we find it.”

More importantly, most MRSA infections can be prevented with good hygiene. The bacteria are often transmitted through skin-to-skin contact, so the best defense is frequent hand washing and proper bandaging of cuts and scrapes. Children should not share personal items such as towels, clothing or athletic uniforms.

“We believe in the common-sense approach,” Nyquist says. “Take your mother’s advice, and always wash your hands. Keep your wounds covered and wash your athletic attire each day you wear it.”

Practice Proper Hand Washing

• Wet your hands with clean running water and apply soap. Use warm water if it is available.
• Rub hands together to make a lather, and scrub all surfaces.
• Continue rubbing hands for 20 seconds. Need a timer? Imagine singing “Happy Birthday” twice through to a friend.
• Rinse hands well under running water
• Dry your hands using a paper towel or air dryer. If possible, use your paper towel to turn off the faucet
• If soap and clean water are not available, use an alcohol-based sanitizer to clean your hands. But remember, for this product to work correctly, your hands should not be visibly soiled.

When to Wash Your Hands

• Before preparing or eating food
• After going to the bathroom
• After changing diapers or cleaning up a child who has gone to the bathroom
• Before and after tending to someone who is sick
• After blowing your nose, coughing, or sneezing
• After handling an animal or animal waste
• After handling garbage
• Before and after treating a cut or wound

Other Resources

• Read FAQs about MRSA from The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, including answers to questions about MSRA in schools and daycare facilities.
• Read more about MRSA from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
• Read the American Academy of Pediatrics information sheet on MRSA.

“The biggest problem in our hospitals is that they are filthy dirty,” said one California epidemiologist. “If we start cleaning the environment, the infection will take care of itself.” In 2005, the most recent government figures, an estimated 500,000 people contracted the superbug, of whom 30,000 died.

Source : MSNBC

The claims cover the general method, means and routes of administration, and specific cases including MRSA. Nasal colonization of patients and healthcare personnel by MRSA frequently leads to serious infection. The Center for Disease Control estimates that 53 million people in the US are colonized with MRSA. Over 2 million people contract staph infections in hospitals each year.

The claimed methods covered by the patent are particularly important for preventing life-threatening bacterial infections, treating immunocompromised patients (including patients undergoing cancer chemotherapy), and reducing the incidence of antibiotic resistant infections.

The patent covers the use of key Intralytix products, including a nasal bacteriophage spray to significantly reduce or eliminate colonization by Staphylococcus aureus, including MRSA. John Vazzana, CEO, speaking for the company said, “Bacterial infection of immunocompromised and seriously ill patients, as well as antibiotic resistant infections are serious problems in today’s world.

We are excited that our technology has been recognized as an innovative approach to help solve these problems. We look forward to bringing this technology to market.”