Dangerous Superbug In Canada

A dangerous strain of a superbug that can be caught outside hospital settings has moved beyond the boundaries of the high-risk groups it first plagued in Canada, causing illness in healthy adults and children in a number of provinces across the country, researchers reported Tuesday. In a series of articles and commentaries rushed to print by the Canadian Medical Association Journal, they reported on the spread of community-acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus - known in the medical community as CA-MRSA. The drug-resistant forms of the bug that are spreading in the community - strains labeled USA300 and USA400 - generally cause hard-to-treat skin and soft-tissue infections, weeping wounds that will not heal. But they can also occasionally cause severe illness and even death in previously healthy individuals. ‘It's sweeping across the nation, no doubt about it,’ said Dr. John Conly, senior author of one of the papers and a leading researcher on the scope of Canada's problem with community-acquired MRSA.