This One-Two Punch Could Prove Fatal

We have all heard by now that this flu season was longer than most due to the H1N1 influenza. We have also heard that this coming flu season in the fall has the potential to be much worse than the average season and much worse than we experienced in the spring; again due to H1N1... We have just learned that people who have the flu are more likely to contract a CA-MRSA infection at the same time!

Just a little background information in case you are not familiar with CA-MRSA; that is Community Associated Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. MRSA is a Staph bacterium that has mutated so that commonly prescribed antibiotics do not harm it and it continues to infest a body. HA-MRSA (Hospital Acquired) has been a problem in hospitals for decades because it would infect people (patients) with low immune systems due to illness or surgery while they were in the hospital. More recently people have been reporting similar symptoms without ever having been in a hospital which is the beginning of our CA-MRSA.

Why is this so bad? Influenza + MRSA = Pneumonia! Now I am not saying that every person who gets the flu will also get MRSA, but it is more likely than contracting MRSA sans flu. The reason is that the flu causes sores in the patient's lungs and throat; these sores are how MRSA enters the body and the blood stream. It is at that point that pneumonia is possible, this carries with it "a mortality rate as high as 50 percent among those who contract it."

For more information, please feel free to check out these links:
http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1692629/new_mrsa_strain_may_be_deadly_for_flu_patients/

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/ColdandFluNews/story?id=4727218&page=1