MRSA Action UK: Will vaccines ever be the answer to super bugs?

Monday, 14, Jul 2008 12:00

The Chief Medical Officer heralds a breakthrough predicting vaccines will be available to help in the fight against healthcare infections such as MRSA and C-diff.

As a Charity that supports and helps those affected by healthcare infections we know only to well that the scientific community have been trying to develop vaccines to help protect people against these bacteria. The efforts to develop vaccines against the most common forms of bacteria that cause infections has been going on since before the development of antibiotics. In fact research was done at St Mary’s Hospital by Alexander Flemings boss Almroth Wright in the 1920’s and 1930’s and was to no avail.

History has shown that bacteria grow well on agar plates; however nothing has been that simple with bacteria that infest our hospitals. Whilst as a Charity we welcome the development of vaccines against these bacteria, and this may seem a logical step in the battle to control infections in our hospitals, we would be cautious in raising hopes of being able to control these bacteria with a vaccine.

The Chief Medical Officer has said that a vaccine against C-diff is some 5 years away and for MRSA anything from 5 to 10 years. All the time these two particular bacteria have many variants to their name and the best that is in development can only vaccinate against the most virulent strains. For example E-MRSA 15 which is endemic in our hospitals, and as research has shown, at least 10 different bandings which evolves rapidly to the environment it is exposed to. The evolution of MRSA has continued worldwide. New strains are developing and becoming resistant to more and more antibiotics. There were hospital outbreaks in the 1970s; by the early 1980s MRSA epidemics were being described in Australia, Ireland and London. Epidemic strains have gone from strength to strength in the UK ever since.

Worldwide there are at least 11 different kinds, which have evolved independently in different places at different times, all descendants of methicillin-sensitive Staphylococcus aureus strains good at spreading in hospitals, and which became MRSA when they acquired a chunk of DNA containing the mecA gene. With C-diff alone we know that different strains have developed independently around the world in different countries making a single vaccine almost impossible to develop.

The talk of vaccines for the MRSA and C-diff bacteria may sound promising, but promises will not save lives now. Whilst we wait for medical science to hopefully develop and answer to the problem of these bacteria in our hospitals, people will continue to suffer and die from them, and only when this Government and the medical profession readily admit to the problems they are facing with the true scale of the numbers infected, only then will we be able to begin to eradicate avoidable infections in our hospitals. Even with the Governments own projections of those affected with these two bacteria, in 5 to 10 years we will have lost anywhere between 25,000 to 50,000 people from them.

In the words of the Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson, hospital hygiene and hand hygiene must play a pivotal role in combating infections in our hospitals. The Government must wake up to the fact that other more dangerous and virulent bacteria are just over the horizon, and unless we bring in the most stringent policies on hygiene in our hospitals we will lose the battle against these bacteria.

Microbes are the best biochemists on the planet they continually evolve and change and they will adapt and change making it ever more difficult to develop anything to combat them including a vaccine. We are still along way from understanding the structure of such organisms and more research is needed before we can say we know what makes them work.

There is only one sure protection against infection, and that is to ensure the patients using our NHS and our hospitals are not exposed to these bacteria in the first place.

Derek Butler

Chair

MRSA Action UK

Registered Charity No 1115672

Tel No 07762 741114

http://mrsaactionuk.net