Bedbugs and superbugs and bears, oh my!

Combine superbugs and bedbugs and what do you get? At least one publication, and a lot of media attention, that’s what. I was trying my hardest to ignore this story, but our stat counter shows that we now have a sizable readership—how can I let them down? My solution to this problem: we should try to destroy bedbugs wherever we find them (oh, we’re already doing that? OK). As for the over 4 million people in the U.S. who carry MRSA in their noses, let's let them live.

Today's Science Times

Every Tuesday brings the Science Times section of the New York Times. This morning, there are two articles of interest for our readers:

• There's an article on bedbugs which explains the reasons why they have become so common in recent years.
• There's an essay on isolation by Abigail Zuger, an infectious diseases physician, which focuses on the human dimensions of a practice that can be rather cruel to patients. She writes of an elderly woman placed in isolation for C. difficile who sobbed continuously: "Increasingly, modern medicine forces us to specialize in the invisible. Here we had invisible germs with an inviolable mandate, and an all too visible patient pleading with us to ignore it. It was quite a struggle to try to see the one, to try not to see the other."

A new epidemic?

I'm sure most hospital epidemiologists would agree that the issues that cause some of the biggest headaches in day-to-day practice are not the invisible viruses and bacteria that cause all sorts of horrible diseases, but rather the bigger bugs like lice and scabies. Now we have a new one to contend with--bed bugs. My IPs have begun to receive calls about them, and the recent spotting of the bugs in a Newark clinic forced a shutdown of an exam and waiting room, and prompted a newspaper article. Fortunately no diseases are transmitted by these pests. Click here for CDC's guidance and links to other resources.

Photo:  Dr. Harold Harlan, Armed Forces Pest Management Board Image Library