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Genetics, microbiology the answer for MRSA
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ATLANTA — Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus is still the infectious bacteria optometrists – and all of health care – need to fear, and likely the only answer for it lies in genetics and molecular biology, according to a speaker here at SECO.
“In the war of drugs vs. bugs, the bugs are winning,” Louis Catania, OD, told attendees of a therapeutics symposium sponsored by Allergan. “It’ll probably take PhDs in a laboratory figuring out how to reverse the DNA of the bug, how to mutate the bugs themselves, to start killing themselves off. What’s growing prolifically? What’s building resistances to everything? It’s the bug.”
The moniker, “the persistent pathogen,” comes from an article written in the New England Journal of Medicine 20 years ago, which even then declared S. aureus as the bug that the world needs to worry about going forward, according to Catania.
“We have to figure out a way to change the genetic code of the bug to start killing itself before it can proliferate more,” he said.
When considering a case where a patient appears to have a bacterial infection, MRSA should be the first one optometrists are thinking about, Catania said.
For example, in contact lenses, the first consideration might be Pseudomonas; but if the eyes are not responding to gentamicin, fortified gentamicin, then vancomycin and fortified vancomycin, it could be MRSA, Catania said.
“If you’ve got a methicillin-resistant strain, you could be in deep trouble,” he said. “You don’t want to let that bug catch you. There are no magic bullets.”