Resistant Organisms...
The most important types of resistant organisms are Enterococcus and Methicillin Resistance Staph. aureus (MRSA). You will see this term a lot, MRSA and Streptococcus pneumoniae. If we had something to really do a number on all of these organisms, we would have a very important drug. By the way, Enterococcus like E. coli is found in every single one of you. It's in the intestinal tract of warm blooded animals. It is also used as an index of pollution, as E. coli is. So in addition to being a creature of a problem in the hospital, it's also a normal flora microorganism in each one of you. See, this is why this particular organism does not invade very well. That's why this guy is particularly important in a hospital ward or particularly in a recovery room or an isolation room. If that organism by itself in you right now got into a wound on your hand, perfectly healthy immune system respond and your host defense would handle that with no problem. But if you're immunocompromised, that can become a very serious problem. That's the organism, Enterococcus faecium, that's becoming resistant to just about every commercial agent that we have including usually the one that's reserved, vancomycin. That's usually used to treat this creature here. One of the greatest fears we have is the resistance from this guy gets into the methicillin resistant Staph. aureus.
By the way, earlier in the day there was some discussion about sexual activities of microbes. With the bacteria, they are very, very flippant. They contain plasmids which are small circular pieces of DNA located outside of the regular chromosomal DNA nucleus that can be exchanged in many cases very freely. Many times that plasmid, that little piece of DNA, carries all the information for resistance to antibiotics. So that's really fearsome. That's what we're worried about is that particular exchange and rapid spread of resistance from enterococci to staphylococci.
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