posted on May, 22 2004 @ 11:55 AM
QUOTE: BBC NEWS
Doctors are very worried about what the future holds for MRSA.
The number of reports of MRSA infections rises year by year - and the latest evidence suggests that deaths due to MRSA are increasing at a similar
rate.
Already, the spectre of a bug resistant to all antibiotics is approaching.
VRSA, or vancomycin resistant Staphylococcus Aureus, has acquired resistance to a drug considered the "last line of defence" when all other
antibiotics have failed.
The UK has already seen several cases of GISA, or glycopeptide intermediate Staphylococcus aureus, a kind of "halfway house" between MRSA and VRSA,
which has developed a resistance to antibiotics of the vancomycin family.
Although new antibiotics are being developed all the time, pessimistic experts believe it is only a matter of time at current rates until virtually
every weapon in the pharmaceutical arsenal is nullified.
Nihilists suggest that there could come a point at which bacteria retake the upper hand, and doctors, as in previous centuries, have no answer to some
bacterial infections.
It should be noted, they say, that humans have only had the upper hand over bacteria for a handful of decades - we have no right to expect that
situation to last forever.