Health News and Scoops

As autumn ushers in cold and flu season, and rising concerns about swine flu, many have questioned whether handshaking should be banned in the workplace, churches and other public gatherings. Although many medical professionals argue that common precautions such as frequent hand washing will safeguard hand shakers from sickness, many people aren’t willing to take that risk, especially professionals who are rebounding from the recession and can’t afford to get sick – literally.

In support of professionals in favor of banning the handshake in the workplace and others who are generally averse to the practice of handshaking, Jalanda James, a New York-based professional is launching StopHandshaking.com.

The site includes tips on alternatives to handshaking, and lapel pins to promote the campaign and help make declining handshakes less awkward.

It is common knowledge now that washing your hands avoids the spread of infection. In hospitals, drastic measures have been taken in the last several years to implement policies aimed at preventing in-hospital deaths from infection. Despite those efforts, it has recently been reported that 1.7 million people each year are sickened by infections acquired while in a hospital, and 99,000 are eventually killed by such infections. That is an alarming number, and it is generally attributed to the frightening spread of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureaus (MRSA). MRSA has been spreading rapidly in hospitals and it’s endangering properties are not unknown.  We were told that Staph’s resistance was a result of our our society’s over-use of antibiotics and our lack of hygienic integrity.  Despite a new parsimony with antibiotic treatment, MRSA is still spreading faster than we can contain it.  

Now what could be scarier than that? An article published this month on the properties of pathogens warns that our massive mobilization of protective efforts and our lowered use of antibiotics may be in vain. A new form of MRSA has been identified, called ‘community-acquired MRSA,’ and its resistant properties are not due to developed resistance. In essence, it’s resistance was self-created. The microbe outdid us again. Although the cause may actually be environmental, it is indeed known now that it’s resistance has nothing to do with our overuse of antibiotics, our lack of hand-washing, or our microbe-infested clothing. The article pokes at the irony of the situation, which is this: community-acquired MRSA is spreading quickly, and it is now beginning to spread into hospitals and health care clinics.

To make an even greater wave of terror, this trend is apparently not exclusive to good ‘ol Staph, but has been shown in the most recent forms of influenza to sweep across the planet. The strains are what is called ‘oseltamivir-resistant influenza,’ which means that these particular strains, especially the H1N1 strain, are resistant to the most common anti-viral medications. So what does all of this mean? In the end, it is always good practice to be prepared and to prescribe fewer unneeded antibiotics, but that may not be the whole story. These bacterial strains and viruses are acquiring favorable mutations that allow them to be selected for and to propagate. Mutations in living species occur all of the time, particularly in viruses which can mutate from person to person. Some of these mutations by chance lead to resistance of a particular antibiotic or antiviral, and thus the species continues to infect without being stopped. These selected-for super-strains may be more of a threat to us in the future than those we create, because we do not know why these mutations have occurred, or whether random mutation is even the cause of the resistance. We may be fighting a more difficult battle than we anticipated, or as the author of the article states about the microbes, “it is their world; we only live in it.” ⁽¹²¹⁾