Is antibiotic treatment for a staph infection effective?
Staph is an abbreviation of Staphylococcus, spherical gram-positive parasitic bacteria that tend to form irregular colonies. This bacterium, Staphylococcus aureus (S.aureus) is the one which causes most of the staph infections. Staph infections can vary from minor skin infections and abscesses, to life-threatening diseases such as pneumonia, meningitis and septicemia.
S.aureus lives harmlessly on the skin, nose, throat, genitals and anus of a person. In some instances it may be found in the colon and urine. Its presence as such does not indicate infection and does not require any treatment. Treatment may actually be ineffective as the bacterium tends to re-colonize again. If it gets a chance of entering the body once the skin is broken or punctured due to one reason or the other. This leads to furuncles (boils) and carbuncles (a collection of boils). It can cause a severe skin disease in children with widespread blister formation. The fluid filled blisters are thin walled and are easily ruptured on light touch leaving denuded areas.
S.aureus infections are contagious and can spread in different ways, including the following:
- Contact with pus from an infected wound.
- Skin to skin contact with an infected person.
- Contact with towels, sheets, clothes or athletic accessories used by an infected person.
S.aureus is capable of secreting different types of toxins that are responsible for specific diseases. People with a deficient immune system health and prosthetic joints run the risk of extreme manifestations of staph infections such as septic arthritis, staphylococcal infection of the heart valves and pneumonia, all of which can prove to be fatal and MUST be treated with an antibiotic regimine.
Antibiotic resistance forms the major hurdle in treating staph infections. Once a particular bacterium is sought to be treated by using an antibiotic heedlessly, it develops resistance to the drug. Actually, antibiotics constitute a single compound, which is easy for bacteria to break. They can then use the compound for their own metabolism. Within seven years of introduction of penicillin, 40% of S.aureus had become resistant to penicillin, rising to 80% in the next decade. Despite discovery of more than 100 drugs under the general category of antibiotics, that either kill or restrict the growth of bacteria, S.aureus is resistant to many commonly used antibiotics.
In such a situation one option available to us is to go back to nature. Most of the minor occurrences of staph infection go away on their own. As environmental spread is almost ruled out, proper hygiene can help prevent the spread of staph infections. Herbal antibiotics , on the other hand, can be used in support of medical treatment.
Many healthy people carry S.aureus without getting sick. A really healthy person is one who has a strong immune system that will fight disease through natural immune responses. Did you ever wonder as to what option was available to mankind before the first antibiotic was discovered by Alexander Fleming? Our ancestors relied on herbs for immune system to keep them healthy and that too minus the risk of resistant bacteria. There is no chance of bacteria becoming resistant to natural substances because of their complex structure of compounds.
