Staphylococcus Aureus Has Devastating Effect!

Domini what you mean by the cause of the infection?

If there's one thing the first poster is absolutely right about, it is that constructive criticism is the best way to go about disagreeing with him, and a lot of people have done this quite well.
I think it's time the myth(s) about staph were dispelled. The thing is the Staphylococci as a specie are really quite ubiquitous, that means they are just about everywhere, but most especially on d skin, and are quite useful in that their predominance makes it difficult for other organisms which may cause infection to grow. Making them skin commensals. The problem arises when the enter sites where they are not usually present, or when for what ever reason the number of a particularly virulent specie multiplies considerably. An example of the first scenario is following a slight injury to the skin, the organisms enter the dermis and cause an abscess (boil), paronychia (whitlow), e.t.c. The major thing to note is that most of the infections attributed to staph are not due to it at all. For example, staphylococcus is not a sexually transmitted infection, nor is it as frequently responsible for urinary, genital or respiratory tract infections as one is led to believe. Infact, staphylococcal soft tissue infections are characterised by extensive tissue destruction and damage, with intense fever, such that they are very much dreaded. So they cannot possibly be the ones to blame for most of the infections we claim in their names.
Sadly, poor laboratory techniques, and handling of specimen and specimen containers before, and after collection of samples, leading to the contamination of the samples by the more ubiquitous staphylococci, in larger amounts, which then tend to overwhelm the culture medium. Sadly, this is such a common problem in privately funded, or 2nd rate government labs, such that most doctors tend to dismiss such results. (imagine a stool sample with all the teeming enterobes coming out with a diagnosis of s. aureus?)
another reason why s. aureus is such a medical nightmare is because of antibiotic-resistant organisms. Most staph infections respond to the simple antibiotic - Ampiclox (actually the cloxacillin part), gentamicin, sulbactam, ciprofloxacin and the quinolones, augmentin, and the cephalosporins, to various degrees. But the abuse of these drugs, either by sub-optimal dosing, unwillingness to complete medications, or chronic usage of these drugs, the wrong practice of using very strong antibiotics for relatively minor infections, as well as such common practices like sterilising our bodies in the name of bathing by dumping antibiotic solutions in our bath water and the profane use of antibiotic soaps all lead to the killing off of weak organisms, but the selective preservation of the more hardy ones, which if they ever cause infections, will end up being difficult to treat. And leading to the development of THE SUPER BUG.
So yes staphylococci can cause a lot of infections, but not the ones a lot of traditional medicine practitioners claim they cause, and for God's sake, it is not a sexually transmissible infection.

@Kevostica
what i meant by root cause is the particular strain of S. aureus that is infecting the individual.


the thing about certain bacteria is that their genes can mutate to varieties that can resist the antibiotics. maybe the in house doctors cam prescribe any antibiotic that can cure the diseases.

kevostika
i still maintain that the reasons for such so called treatment failure, is because one is treating the wrong organism in the first place.
To illustrate my point, i'll give u a scenario. A lady comes to the clinic complaining of lower abdominal pain, and vaginal discharge. She is sent for a swab test. Now the swab stick might have been opened before, or the person taking the swab does not use a speculum to reveal the cervix, or the swab inadvertently comes in contact with the skin, or the swab is not used within an hour of collection. All these cause staphylococci to come unto the swab stick, in higher numbers than the organism causing the infection, so when  u culture, u see staphylococci as the offending organism, and if u treat based on that, u r treating based no a false premise, so u may end up with treatment failure. I know a doctor who tears up any result he see with staph aureus on it.
But as everyone else has pointed out, treatment failure when the organism is really staph is usually as a result of drug resistant.