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TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2007
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EDITORIAL

Researchers on trail of deadly staphs

Neutrophils cells are a mainline defense that help us fight infections. Eliminate them and the body comes down with those scary antibiotic-resistant staph infections that we read about today.

One of the super infections is MRSA, short for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. That one is associated with medical facilities and older people.

The other one is CA-MRSA and it affects people outside healthcare settings.

Researchers thus far know where people are mostly likely to get the infections and now are working on why they get them.

The CA-MRSA strain secretes a chemical soup of amino acids, or peptides, that attacks the neutrophils and causes them to explode. They have destroyed human cells in an hour's time in lab experiments.

That information came from a team of U.S. and German researchers of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases over the weekend.

If the research holds up, pharmaceutical companies quickly will focus on developing drugs to protect our bodies against these super staph infections.

You might say the good guys in the labs give the appearance they will defeat yet another of the body's rogue elements.

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