Docs Worry About Deadly Flu-Bacteria Combo

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http://www.wsmv.com/health/15990480/detail.html

Docs Worry About Deadly Flu-Bacteria Combo

Researchers Track MRSA Trends

POSTED: 7:47 am CDT April 25, 2008

BOSTON -- Massachusetts state health officials are concerned about a

deadly combination of influenza and bacteria that has been found in

several cases where children have died from the flu.

They are worried about the Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus

aureus infection, also called MRSA, which is very difficult to treat.

Two children who died from flu in the state were found to have both

the flu and MRSA, and officials are worried that there may be a link.

MRSA was formerly found mostly in hospitals, but now is being found

in healthy children and adults who carry the germ in their noses and

throats. They don't know it, and there's no obvious harm, but doctors

believe that people who are co-infected -- meaning they have both flu

and MRSA -- are more likely to die.

They're calling it " fluMRSA " and of the 74 children who died of flu

nationwide in 2006 and 2007, 22 of them also had staph infection and

most of those were MRSA cases. In Massachusetts, of the four children

who died, two had MRSA.

At the state health department lab, researchers are working with the

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to activate a monitoring

network so they can track those with fluMRSA to detect any kind of

trends.

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