Drug-resistant staph or MRSA: is aspirin the antidote?

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has been in the news this summer, and the NY Times has a popular story on it.

Some years ago, I contracted a serious infection when I was hospitalized for minor surgery. While being treated for the infection, I learned from hospital staff that some hospitals are more careful then others about preventing infections.

This summer when I was in Melbourne (actually, it was winter down there) , I picked up a really nasty staph infection on my finger. It was border line MRSA, certainly. Various antibiotics were not helpful at all. Then I read that Australian hospitals are notorious incubators of MRSA. I also noticed that Australians use really strong anticeptics everywhere you go. In NZ and Australia, public washrooms often stink of noxious smelling cleaning fluids. I can't help but imagine the over-use of chemicals is contributing to the emergence of drug resistant bacteria in Oceania. At the same time, Australia's major hospitals are not taking the problem seriously enough.

By contrast, when I get an infection in Thailand, it's invariably easy to cure with a course of doxycycline -- one of the common penicillins.

What to do if you get MRSA?
I did some research on treatments for MRSA because my finger was not getting better, despite the antibiotics the Australian doctor prescribed. I found out something very exciting. It turns out that taking a common drug, aspirin, may be highly beneficial in the treatment or prevention of MRSA. This isn't definitive, of course, but some recent studies are promising.

But is it safe to take aspirin if you have a staph infection? Aspirin appears to be contradicted with Fusidic Acid -- a commonly administered antibiotic (intravenous) for patients with serious staph infections (fusidic acid helped to cure me of a previous staph infection for which I was hospitalized many years ago). Australian researchers explained this "Aspirin paradox":

Salicylate and related compounds, such as aspirin, have a variety of effects in eucaryotic systems and are well known for their medicinal properties. Salicylate also has numerous effects on bacteria, yet only a handful of individuals within the scientific community appreciate these findings. From a bacterial viewpoint, growth in the presence of salicylate can be both beneficial and detrimental. On one hand, growth of certain bacteria in the presence of salicylate can induce an intrinsic multiple antibiotic resistance phenotype. On the other hand, growth in the presence of salicylate can reduce the resistance to some antibiotics and affect virulence factor production in some bacteria. This review provides an overview of the effects salicylate has on various bacterial species.

So depending on what antibiotic you are taking, aspirin could help, or it could be detrimental to your recovery.

At Makzan.com, I'm building a resource where you can find powerful ideas for healthy living -- stuff that few people know about -- like aspirin for staph. And I will always tell you the pros and cons -- so far as I know them.

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