I have had an MRSA Staph iinfection for about 4 months now. MRSA i believe stands for methicillin resistant staph aureus. Anyway, basically the infection I have is resisteant to almost all antibiotics and the ones the Army doctors have tried have not worked. I have had 3 surgeries to no avail to rid me of the boils and abscesses that form almost every week. I have heard recent talk about a possible medical discharge or compassionate reassignment to get me the medical care that I cant get here in Germany. My question is can the Army actually discharge you for this kind of infection or will it be best for them to reassign me to a non combative unit to avoid the risk of greater infection and contamination??

I usually do not stick my head into Army, but I have had lung based MRSA. Have they tried Zyvox?

Currently their is two or three antibiotics that have shown effective on mrsa.
These are new and may not be on most med lists.
You have to stay clean!

Existing drug will cure hospital superbug MRSA, say scientists


· Compound kills antibiotic-resistant bacteria in tests
· Routine treatment could be available in two years

Sarah Hall, health correspondent
Wednesday January 17, 2007
The Guardian


Scientists believe they have found a cure for the MRSA superbug after unearthing an existing drug on a computer database.
The discovery means patients could be routinely treated within two or three years, since the drug is known to be safe and is already used on the NHS in the treatment of acute illness.

The potentially fatal bug is currently treatable only with the antibiotic vancomycin, and some strains are developing resistance to the drug.

Attempts to curb MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) succeeded in reducing cases by only 2%, to 7,097, last year, and a leaked Department of Health memo last week warned that the target of halving all cases by 2008 would not be met.

In this climate, scientists are keen to find a "cure", and several potential solutions - including a topical antibiotic that would be applied up the nose, a main site of MRSA - are in development.

But a mathematical biologist, and pro-vice-chancellor of Newcastle University, has come up with a novel way of speeding up the search and has identified a licensed drug that has been proven to be safe and is no more expensive than existing antibiotics. Professor Malcolm Young has used new computing techniques to identify the combination of proteins that need to be targeted to kill off MRSA bacteria, and to discover whether a drug targeting these proteins already exists among a list of 10m compounds.

Prof Young - who has set up a research organisation, e-Therapeutics, which is in discussion with pharmaceutical companies - explained: "We looked at what proteins are expressed inside MRSA and then computed what their vulnerabilities are. We computed the combination of proteins that would most damage MRSA and we also used the computer ... to find compounds that would interact with these combinations of proteins."

The brand name of the drug, ETS 1153, which is currently prescribed for another condition, has not been revealed for commercial reasons.

Prof Young received grants totalling £10m to research and develop his approach. "We can bypass some of the early testing because they've been through the clinical trials process before and we know they're safe. We should have them in hospitals in two to three years."

Prof Young, whose mother contracted MRSA last year, envisaged that because the drug differed from existing antibiotics, to which MRSA has gained resistance, it could pave the way to the superbug becoming curable. "[If we can find an antibiotic that kills them off] we can take out the fuss around MRSA."

In laboratory tests, the drug - in reality three drugs belonging to the same family - has killed all 50 strains of MRSA on which it has been tested, including vancomycin-resistant strains, as well as other dangerous bacteria such as vancomycin-resistant enterococci and Staphylococcus epidermidis.

Clive Page, professor of pharmacology and therapeutics at King's College London, said: "This is very interesting. If he's found something by searching a database of existing drugs against bacterial proteins and come up with drugs already in clinical use, it could be used for patients very quickly."

MRSA is a form of common bacterium, Staphylococcus aureus, which is particularly dangerous for those whose immune systems have been compromised. In extreme cases, it can lead to death and 360 people died of it in 2004, the most recent figures available.

Vancomycin is not the only drug for MRSA. Zyvox is a novel drug that is a modified MAO inhibitor. It is a novel drug. It also produces about the same bio availability in pill and IV form, so it is much cheaper to administer. There is also one drug the is available only for IM and skin application.

well after almost a year of suffering from MRSA the Army hasdecided to send me to the Med Board. Along with the MRSA it has also caused extreme fatigue, muscle weakness, severe migraines,and sleepdeprivation due to the pain. Not happy about the Med Board but at least something is getting done to help me.