MRSA stands for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Staphylococcus aureus is a common bacteria that is better known as “staph”. It is not deadly and is treatable by many different types of antibiotics. With the MRSA disease, it is the “methicillin-resistant” part of the name that is troubling. Essentially, it means that a strain of the staph bacteria has developed that is resistant to methicillin antibiotics, which are essentially all the usual antibiotics used to treat staph. Whereas staph infection kills almost nobody, the MRSA kills over 19,000 people a year.
Every living organism evolves over time. The staph bacteria are not different. The bacteria are continually killed by MRSA bacteria until a slight variation of it survives. That bacteria then starts replicating and spreading. The big fear, of course, is that the MRSA disease reproduction explodes and we are suddenly overwhelmed with a bacteria that thrives in our hospitals and medical care facilities, yet is untreatable for the most part. This is why MRSA is considered a superbug and a potential huge problem.
