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MRSA Death in Florida Prison

Our condolences go out to the family and friends of Dorothy Dian Palinchik who died yesterday. She had been battling for 2 weeks with a staph infection that started in a Pinellas County Jail in Florida. This highlight the fact that MRSA needs be taken seriously by health care providers, whether in a hospital or a prison. MRSA is a deadly infection that has superior resistance to antibiotics.

Here is the story as reported by the local paper. There is a link at the end for the full story.

Dorothy Dian Palinchik dies only hours after her family decides to remove her from life support.

By Johnathan Abel, Times Staff Writer
Published February 29, 2008

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Dorothy Helen Palinchik began the last day of her daughter’s life with a terrible choice.Her daughter, Dorothy Dian Palinchik, was in a medically induced coma at Largo Medical Center, suffering from a staph infection and pneumonia, both of which the family said she contracted at the Pinellas County Jail.

Just before 7 a.m. Thursday, doctors told Palinchik that her 42-year-old daughter’s blackened hands and feet were irreversibly damaged and her bowels were not viable.

The only choice was between amputating all of Palinchik’s limbs or taking her off life support. Just a few hours later, doctors amended their decision, saying amputation was out of the question.

“They said she would never live through something like that,” Palinchik’s mother said.

At that point, the family decided to remove Palinchik from life support, once her sister Annette Olds drove in from Fort Myers this morning.

But Palinchik’s ravaged body couldn’t wait.

At 4:14 p.m. she was pronounced dead, ending a tortured two-week illness that has raised questions about the medical care at the Pinellas County Jail.

Palinchik’s family blames the jail for not recognizing the illness earlier and for not treating it aggressively enough. They believe her life could have been saved if she’d been taken to the hospital sooner.

On Thursday, Palinchik’s mother had a preliminary conversation with St. Petersburg lawyer Thomas D. Masterson about suing the jail.

Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Marianne Pasha said privacy laws prevented her from discussing Palinchik’s medical treatment. She said an internal investigation is under way, which is standard in any case where an inmate becomes gravely ill.

The only thing she could say about Palinchik’s condition is that she showed no signs of the methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infection when she was booked into the jail on Feb. 13.

One of the remarkable aspects of Palinchik’s death is how quickly she deteriorated.

For more of this story visit

Study Highlights MRSA Evolution and Resilience

NIH Study on MRSA released in January
Community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA) infections are caused primarily by a single strain — USA300 — of an evolving bacterium that has spread with “extraordinary transmissibility” throughout the United States during the past five years, according to a new study led by National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientists. CA-MRSA, an emerging public health concern, typically causes readily treatable soft-tissue infections such as boils, but also can lead to life-threatening conditions that are difficult to treat.

The study, from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of NIH, resolves debate about the molecular evolution of CA-MRSA in the United States. The findings rule out the previously held possibility that multiple strains of USA300, the most troublesome type of CA-MRSA in the United States, emerged randomly with similar characteristics. The study also offers a hypothesis for the origin of previous S. aureus outbreaks, such as those caused by penicillin-resistant strains in the 1950s and 1960s.

A second study led by the same NIAID scientists takes the issue of the evolution of MRSA a step further, revealing new information about how MRSA bacteria in general, including the USA300 group, elude the human immune system.

The first study, which appears online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that the USA300 group of CA-MRSA strains, collectively called the epidemic strain, comprises nearly identical clones that have emerged from a single bacterial strain. It is the first time scientists have used comparative genome sequencing to reveal the origins of epidemic CA-MRSA. Frank R. DeLeo, Ph.D., at NIAID’s Rocky Mountain Laboratories (RML) in Hamilton, Mont., led the research.

“Scientists are pressing ahead quickly to learn more about how some MRSA strains evade the immune system and spread rapidly,” says NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D. “The information presented in these two studies adds important new insights to that expanding knowledge base.”

To understand how CA-MRSA is evolving in complexity and spreading geographically, Dr. DeLeo’s group sequenced the genomes of 10 patient samples of the USA300 bacterium recovered from individuals treated at different U.S. locations between 2002 and 2005. They then compared these genomes to each other and to a baseline USA300 strain used in earlier studies. Eight of the 10 USA300 patient samples were found to have nearly indistinguishable genomes, indicating they originated from a common strain. The remaining two bacteria were related to the other eight, but more distantly.

Interestingly, of the eight nearly indistinguishable USA300 patient samples, two caused far fewer deaths in laboratory mice than the others, highlighting an emerging view that tiny genetic changes among evolving strains can profoundly affect disease severity and the potential for drug resistance to develop.

“The USA300 group of strains appears to have extraordinary transmissibility and fitness,” says Dr. DeLeo. “We anticipate that new USA300 derivatives will emerge within the next several years and that these strains will have a wide range of disease-causing potential.” Ultimately, Dr. DeLeo and his colleagues hope that the work will lead to the development of new diagnostic tests that can quickly identify specific strains of MRSA.

Fred C. Tenover, Ph.D., of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta (CDC) contributed the 10 USA300 clinical isolates from CDC’s Active Bacterial Core Surveillance system. Other study collaborators included Barry N. Kreiswirth, Ph.D., of the International Center for Public Health (ICPH) in Newark, N.J., and James M. Musser, M.D., Ph.D., of The Methodist Hospital Research Institute in Houston.

The second report, which involved scientists from RML, ICPH and Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, was recently published online in the Journal of Immunology. This study provides scientists with new details about the complex mechanisms MRSA uses to avoid destruction by neutrophils, human white blood cells that ingest and destroy microbes. When exposed to hydrogen peroxide, hypochlorous acid (the active component of household bleach) or antimicrobial proteins — all killer chemicals released by neutrophils — MRSA senses danger, escapes harm and turns the tables on the white blood cells, destroying them. Work is continuing in Dr. DeLeo’s lab to understand how the bacterium senses and survives attacks by neutrophils.

NIAID is a component of the National Institutes of Health. NIAID supports basic and applied research to prevent, diagnose and treat infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections, influenza, tuberculosis, malaria and illness from potential agents of bioterrorism. NIAID also supports research on basic immunology, transplantation and immune-related disorders, including autoimmune diseases, asthma and allergies.

News releases, fact sheets and other NIAID-related materials are available on the NIAID Web site at http://www.niaid.nih.gov.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) — The Nation’s Medical Research Agency — includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is the primary federal agency for conducting and supporting basic, clinical and translational medical research, and it investigates the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.

For the original release visit the NIH

Victim of MRSA and Neglect – Gets Award

If you are a victim of a Hospitals neglect and contract MRSA it may be time to seek the advice of an attorney familiar with MRSA and Hospital care. Hospitals should be doing everything possible worldwide to prevent MRSA from infecting its patients during their stay. Here is what one UK court case had as its outcome.

Warning after star’s £5m MRSA pay-out

A BOLTON solicitor is warning hospitals they could face a surge of new superbug claims.

The alert comes after former Men Behaving Badly star Leslie Ash won a record £5 million out-of-court settlement after she contracted MRSA while a patient at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.

People who contract infections such as MRSA and Clostridium difficile while in hospital could now feel more confident about making a claim against the NHS, according to Stephenson’s Solicitors, based in Silverwell Street, Bolton.

For the full story visit

Grieving family plead for action on MRSA crisis

Why is it that the places we go to for health care still do not understand MRSA and how to better prevent it. When a person is sick we go to a hospital to get better and not worse. Hospitals need to be held to higher standards as this article suggests.

Grieving family plead for action on MRSA crisis

From the Independent.ie News
Saturday February 02 2008

The distraught family of a civil rights activist who died in hospital have called on the Government to act on the MRSA crisis.

Barbara Forde (67), died on December 3, 2006, just over a month after entering Beaumont Hospital for an abdominal operation. An inquest found yesterday that MRSA was a contributing factor in her decline after the operation.

Her brother Kieran Forde said after the inquest: “It is now up to the politicians to do something about this”.

Ms Forde, from Dollymount Road in Clontarf in Dublin, rapidly deteriorated after contracting post-operative pneumonia, MRSA pneumonia (hospital acquired) and blood clots in her lungs after the operation.

Barbara’s brother Dermot Forde, a practising vet, attacked the Government and health system claiming meat processing plants have stricter hygiene standards than Irish hospitals.

He said: “There is more bio-security in terms of access to chicken farms then there is in terms of access to intensive care post-operative units”.

Risk

Dr Brian Farrell, Dublin City Coroner, found that the MRSA pneumonia along with her other conditions: “constituted significant risk factors for the development of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS)”. He found she ultimately died from ARDS.

Mr Declan Buckley, representing Beaumont Hospital, established that MRSA was only one of a number of factors that lead to Ms Forde’s death.

In cross examining Mr Henry Osbourne, Ms Forde’s hospital consultant, it was established that Ms Forde had MRSA on November 9 2006, which was hospital acquired, but it was treated and seemed to have cleared by November 13.

The coroner accepted these findings but suggested that the MRSA contracted did not help Ms Forde at that time and Mr Osbourne agreed.

Mr Osbourne later said: “Anything that was going to affect Ms Forde’s lung function post -operation at that time was going to be a significant factor”.

For more of this article

Copyright © 2008 MRSA Diagnosis

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