Superbug Migrating From Hospitals To Outside World

Medical investigators who are examining the growing prevalence of a drug-resistant superbug found largely outside of hospitals say it's likely that it can find its way into health care settings and pose a new threat. Hospital-acquired infections remain a global public health concern despite increasingly sophisticated methods of surveillance, screening and methods of prevention, doctors say. Amid this concern is the increasing prevalence of the notorious antibiotic-resistant bacterium known as MRSA, for methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus. Methicillin-resistant means the bug can repel the hardy antibiotic methicillin, a drug that in the 1960s quickly halted a staph aureus infection. But MRSA has evolved into new strains, some highly virulent, and is spreading through outside communities. Just two decades ago, MRSA was passed on only in hospitals, creeping through intravenous lines and catheters or passed from the hands of a doctor or nurse to patients.