Superbug bites dog, or what I learned the hard way about MRSA and MRSI
By Christie Keith
March 3, 2008
And you thought spider bites were bad enough. Welcome to the brave new post-drug resistant superbug world — and meet the latest staph infection poster child, my Borzoi, Kyrie.
Wednesday night, she had a small, quarter-sized red patch on her hip that seemed to hurt her terribly. I got her into the vet the next day, and she diagnosed a spider bite, shaved and cleaned the area, and put her on antibiotics, pain meds, and gave me lydocaine spray to numb it. She predicted Kyrie would feel better in around 48 hours.
By Saturday, Kyrie had an 8 inch by 8 inch patch of infected, oozing, red, raw skin. It was swollen and blistered. I spoke to my vet, who told me to take her off the antibiotic and bring her in today for a skin culture.
But Kyrie spent all last night huddling next to me on the bed whimpering, so this morning I canceled the visit to my local vet, and headed off to see a specialist.
I had a fairly good idea what was going on, and my vet agreed with me: what we know in human medicine as methicillin-resistant staphylocuccus aureus, or MRSA.
In dogs and cats, a more typical finding is methicillin-resistant staphylococcus intermedius, MRSI, but it’s otherwise pretty much the same problem: a common bacteria, found in and on most dogs, people, and surfaces, has evolved to be able to resist the antibiotics we normally use to treat it.
MRSI and MRSA are strains of staph that have acquired a gene, known as the mecA gene, that prevents two widely used kinds of antibiotics, the penicillins (such as ampicillin) and cephalosporins (such as cephalexin, brand name Keflex), from being able to bind to the bacteria. One 2006 study found that 13 percent of the dogs tested carried this strain.
MRSA is the bug called “flesh-eating bacteria,” and it can cause terrible and even fatal skin and lung infections. But not all MRSA/MRSI is that deadly, and not all of it is currently untreatable.
There are two basic categories of MRSA, one commonly found in hospitals, nursing homes, and other health care institutions, and one of what are known as “community” MRSA strains, that are passed by casual contact.
Hospital MRSA is resistant to many antibiotics, not just a few — sometimes, it’s resistant to every antibiotic yet invented — and also infects people who are already sick or compromised.
On the other hand, community MRSA infections in people and MRSI infections in animals are treatable. They usually respond to antibiotics other than the penicillins and cephalosporins, although they develop resistance to fluoroquinolones (drugs like Baytril) very easily.
In addition, only a very small percentage of animals or humans with resistant staph become ill. It is mostly a risk to sick, very young, or immune-compromised individuals. And although it’s possible for a human to transmit a MRSA infection to an animal, and an animal to transmit a MRSI infection to a human, that rarely happens.
So now you’re thinking, well, at least it’s not all that contagious, and it’s treatable. And you’re right. It is. But that’s the good news. Ready for the bad news?
On a personal level, try this: the drug Kyrie’s first vet put her on cost me thirty bucks. The drug we had to switch to? A three-week’s supply cost me $398.
But the really bad news has nothing to do with my bank account. Bacteria have a dazzling ability to trade genes and develop resistance, so strains that are susceptible to, say, doxycycline or Baytril today could easily be resistant to it tomorrow. And if you think my dog’s prescription was expensive, want to know how much a course of vancomycin, the drug of last resort for resistant staph, would cost? Around $1000. Not to mention it has to be given intravenously, is highly toxic to the kidneys, and overuse is leading to the further development of vancomycin resistant bacteria, which is leading directly to the loss of human lives.
Now is where I should be wrapping up with a message telling all of you what to do to prevent your dog or cat from getting sick with a resistant strain of staph. Unfortunately, I have no idea what caused Kyrie, who seemed perfectly healthy until that little red spot appeared on her hip Wednesday night, to develop this terrible infection (click to view picture at full size).
Kyrie will be 9 next month and has always been healthy. I take good care of her, she’s on a balanced homemade diet, gets plenty of exercise, and there’s no reason to think she’s in any way immune-compromised. She’s never had an infection before, not even a bladder infection.
So the only word of warning I’ll leave you with is to be aware. Most skin infections with MRSI or MRSA are initially misdiagnosed as spider or insect bites, as Kyrie’s was. If your dog develops a sore or wound and you don’t know why, get it cultured sooner rather than later. Because sadly, these infections are very painful; even though she’s on pain meds, Kyrie won’t even eat standing up, and is refusing to go on walks beyond a few feet into the park to potty. She’s not sleeping well, and when she does, she gives little whimpers every so often.
Because the antibiotic we initially used had no action against the bacteria causing the wound, she suffered days longer than she needed to. She’s still suffering now, although hopefully her new meds will kick in and we’ll both get some sleep tonight.
Fingers crossed for quick recovery.
Thanks for sharing this info.
Comment by hornblower — March 3, 2008 @ 9:50 pm
Sending Kyrie love and wishes for a speedy recovery.
Comment by kb — March 3, 2008 @ 10:15 pm
Thank you for that good information. Staph seems to be rampant these days. Hearing about it more frequently than before. It must be alarming to you, Christie. Rest and heal, Kyrie.
Comment by Nadine L. — March 3, 2008 @ 11:07 pm
I’m sorry Kyrie has the misfortune to be battle a super-bug :( My pup just went through a yucky groom-shop-acquired skin infection, and it was no fun. She sends an empathetic aroooo to Kyrie!
I think you might be mistaken when you say that Staph. aureus (or S. insipidus) are what are commonly known as flesh-eating bacteria. As bad as having an MRSA/I infection is, necrotizing fasciitis is much more severe, often requiring amputation of a limb to halt the rapid spread of infection. There are several “flesh-eating bacteria”, with bacteria in the Streptococcus family (especially S. pyogenes) being the most common.
Comment by Megan — March 4, 2008 @ 5:59 am
Hoping Kyrie is feeling better soon !
Comment by Leslie k — March 4, 2008 @ 7:59 am
Thanks for the good wishes, everyone!
Staph. aureus is one of the bacteria that can cause necrotizing fascitis… we had a huge outbreak of it here in California in 2004.
However, that was the hospital acquired strain of MRSA, not the plain old community-acquired MRSA. I didn’t mean to imply Kyrie was at risk of that!
Comment by Christie Keith — March 4, 2008 @ 9:55 am
In addition to her antibiotic treatment, I’d be very tempted to add commercially prepared 5PPM collodial silver (i.e. visit Wild Oats) to the wound treatment to increase the microstatic antibacterial activity there. I’ve had very good luck with colloidal silver with my kitties who both lived to 21 years old. The key in their medical statements is that this is RESISTANT…
Comment by Dennis — March 4, 2008 @ 12:19 pm
Fortunately, she is HUGELY improved from just one dose of the new
pile of moneyantibiotics. I have never had any effect on anything I tried colloidal silver on, from rashes, hangnails, and cuts of my own, to my dog Raven’s ear infections, to digestive problems. I’m afraid I’m a colloidal silver non-believer.Comment by Christie Keith — March 4, 2008 @ 12:59 pm
Christie, happy dances for Kyrie that she has shown improvement! Poor thing. This is all new to me, thanks for letting us know.
Comment by Sandi K — March 4, 2008 @ 5:00 pm
Christie, hope Kyrie heals quickly on the wallet-busting antibiotic. Has your vet tried medical grade honey on these resistant infections? I’m cuious if what I’ve read is fact or fiction re efficacy.
Comment by MaineMom — March 4, 2008 @ 9:23 pm
No, I haven’t had honey suggested to me. I’m sure it has some anti-microbial activity, but I wouldn’t expect it to have efficacy here, on an infection in the tissues. But I’d have to know more to say for sure.
Comment by Christie Keith — March 5, 2008 @ 9:33 am
Have you had her thyroid checked? (The blood sample should go to Michigan State for this.) As you correctly point out, most animals and people with MRSA on their skin don’t get sick. So there’s a reason this happened to Kyrie. My elderly Collie would have died from a MRSA infection if we hadn’t figured out that he was hypothyroid and started him on thyroid supplementation. The MRSA infection was the only symptom he had. His skin and coat looked fine.
Comment by Susan — March 5, 2008 @ 12:45 pm
Yikes! Not fun for anyone. Am glad to hear that 24 hours on new antibiotics produced noticeable changes. Which sort of brings me to this point. While I concede that a culture first thing would be good, wouldn’t the results of a culture take longer than just changing antibiotics if no improvement was seen in 2 days? In my mind 2 days would be plenty to see the if the infection was going to halt in its tracks, if not start to heal a bit. I would want to know what kind of bacteria was present, but I think using a culture as a diagnostic tool might be too slow.
Comment by CathyA — March 9, 2008 @ 6:08 am
Just saw this on CNN:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH.....index.html
Comment by The OTHER Pat — March 12, 2008 @ 5:22 pm
It very well could be a spider bite. The brown recluse can have an extremely toxic bite, resulting in necrosis and death. Some people get sick and die, others don’t, it probably varies from spider to spider. I got a bite, it was in my sleep, I woke for a moment, then brushed it off, didn’t remember till much later…it leaves a necosis spot that usually turns black, and speads. The immunde system attacks the toxin, and it starts release of poison in the blood stream. There isn’t a lot of information ‘out there’, but there was a public television program, complete with progression of medical treatment to death of the bite, and a laypersons scientific explanation of the toxic effect. I wouldn’t try to explain it, other than when the immune system attacks the toxin, it is actually released in the blood stream and kidney and organ failure develop. It’s two stages, first the necrosis, then the systemic poison release, sometimes months later. If it’s only a skin infection, try surface treatment of Rosemary or Teatree essential oil. I am not a vet. Check with someone who’s opinion you respect, but if applied and cleaned daily it should clear up almost anything. If it is a brown recluse bite, it would be beneficial if you could get further information, it’s out there somewhere.
Comment by Diane — April 19, 2008 @ 11:50 pm
After reading your story, I would try to give her something called Virastop by Enzymedica. It is an protein enzyme and it did clear up whatever problem I had as well as my daughter’s terrible infection. It looked like terrible boils, terrible, painful, skin condition. I also put colloidal silver salve on the boils and they never came to a head or got bigger like they did if they weren’t treated. The Virastop is given on an empty stomach. I probably went through 2 or 3 bottles before it cleared up and has never come back. It is a much safer alternative to antibiotics. You also need to give her probiotics and enzymes because the antibiotics destroy the gut flora. Also goldenseal is a great alternative to antibiotics, too!
Comment by Debbie Snead — April 20, 2008 @ 8:59 am