Rise In Antibiotic-Resistant Pediatric Infections

The percentage of children’s ear, nose and throat infections caused by a type of dangerous, drug-resistant bacteria has more than doubled nationwide. The increase has been described as alarming and is a cause for concern. The bacteria, known as methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, can cause dangerous and even life-threatening invasive infections that do not respond to penicillin-based antibiotics. Doctors are concerned that MRSA is becoming resistant to other antibiotics as well.

The new study is the first nationwide analysis and has revealed just how common the MRSA bacteria are in deeper tissue infections of the head and neck including specific ear infections, sinus infections, and abscesses that develop in the tonsils and throat. The report was published in the Archives of Otolaryngology.

According to Dr. Steven Sobol, a children's head and neck specialist from Emory University and a study author, “In most parts of the United States, there's been an alarming rise.” He said that MRSA head and neck infections are most likely to develop in people who are MRSA carriers and become susceptible only after suffering from an ear, nose or throat infection caused by some other germ.

Staph germs can live or on the skin, as well as in tissues inside the nose and throat, without causing any symptoms. MRSA germs are not airborne and therefore aren’t spread by sneezing and coughing like a cold or the flu. The symptoms of MRSA infections include an ear infection with discharge or the presence of swelling in neck lymph nodes caused by drainage of a throat or nose abscess.

The study was based on nationwide information taken from an electronic database that gathers the lab results of over 300 hospitals. The analysis found 21,009 pediatric head and neck infections caused by staph germs from 2001 through 2006. During the period analyzed, the percentage of infections caused by MRSA bacteria more than doubled from about 12 percent to 28 percent. In addition, nearly 60 percent of the MRSA infections found were believed to have developed outside a hospital setting. The severity of MRSA illness in children was not within the scope of the study.

MRSA infections have historically been predominant only in health-care settings such as hospitals or nursing homes but studies have now shown that they are on the rise in the community and affecting otherwise healthy people. The infections are spread through direct skin-to-skin contact as well as through contact with surfaces contaminated by germs from an open wound such as a cut.

The researchers also noted that about 46 percent of the MRSA infections studied were resistant to the non-penicillin antibiotic clindamycin, commonly used to treat community-acquired MRSA. Yet, some experts believe that more likely than not, at least some of the infections originated in a health-care setting where resistance to clindamycin is common.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an estimated 94,000 Americans develop severe invasive MRSA infections each year with MRSA claiming the lives of 19,000 of them.