The role of healthcare workers in MRSA transmission

Is discussed in a paper in the Lancet Infectious Diseases - are healthcare workers the source of the infection, or a vector, or something else?

Conclusions (looking quickly) seem to be that they are important as a vector, but possibly not as a source.

I think I am a little worried by the search strategy, which doesn't seem to include alternative terms for "MRSA", just "MRSA" (does this matter, I wonder?), and doesn't seem to include specific healthcare workers, only the phrase "healthcare worker(s)". The authors did however use the Outbreak Database, http://www.outbreak-database.com/, which was new to me. Not sure if this is a current database - it seems to have started with information from a Medline search done up until 2002. The search page doesn't seem to be working at the moment.

Paper is:

Albrich WC, Harbarth S. Health-care workers: source, vector, or victim of MRSA? Lancet Infectious Diseases 2008; 8(5): 289-301.

Link accessible to Science Direct subscribers (University of Leicester members, this is you!):
(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6W8X-4SFS83N-X/1/727e6be35322303f2c8443ac0203fd89)

University of Leicester members: I can advise if you have problems with this link.

Ranalexin and lysostaphin in MRSA

A tiny snippet in Nursing Times mentioned research done at St. Andrews, which looked at inhibiting MRSA with a combination of the antibiotic lysostaphin and ranalexin, a peptide found in bullfrogs.

This is, I am sure, a paper in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy:

Graham S, Coote PJ.
Potent, synergistic inhibition of Staphylococcus aureus upon exposure to a combination of the endopeptidase lysostaphin and the cationic peptide ranalexin.J Antimicrob Chemother. 2007 Apr;59(4):759-62. Epub 2007 Feb 26.

The PubMed record is here - and the full text link should work for University of Leicester members (you may need to login with Athens off campus).

MRSA and maggots

I remember hearing about this on the radio news, but have just discovered a piece about it in the Guardian.

Researchers at Manchester University tried bluebottle maggots on patients with MRSA-infected diabetic foot ulcers and found that in all but one case, the infection was cleared up.

I couldn't find the published research that led to this article, until I found the University's own press release which made me remember the first rule of literature searching for authors: can the author be spelt some other way? The Guardian has him as Bolton, but he is in fact Boulton, and the press release cites the publication.

The Guardian does report that the Manchester team has been given a grant by Diabetes UK to run an RCT on this.