MRSA & Crohn's

[thunderbear]

I just want to know yalls opinions on this. Does anyone think there may be a correlation between Crohn's or even other autoimmune disorders & MRSA infection? The MRSA may not cause the disease but may trigger it. Even though my husband had tell tell signs of CD going back to 12 years old, he did'nt get very sick until he was 27. In May of 2005 he was bitten on his knee by a brown recluse spider. About a week after being bitten he developed an abcess and went to the ER. The doc cut his leg open and pulled a long cotton swab (unwrapped) out of his lab coat pocket (you know that thing could'nt of been sterile) and began to dig around in the incision with the wooden end. Testing confirmed it was indeed a spider bite. Go forward another week and the incsion had not healed. It was getting worse so we went back to the ER and they did cultures. Our GP called us the next day and said the cultures were positive for MRSA. He put hubby on Bactrim & Doxycycline and after a few weeks the wound had healed with minimal tissue loss. But he started havind bad diareah a little fever every now & then. The docs said all his labs came back negative so it must of been from the antibiotics & his comprimised immunity. They said it would take a bit to build back up. Well in August my husband started having alot of back pain & right abdominal pain. He went to the ER thinking he hurt his back at work. They gave him a Toradol shot, some pain pills & flexril & sent him home. 3 days later, he started turning an odd greenish color so I made him go back to the ER. They did extensive testing but the only thing they could find was very hi creatine & liver enzymes. They come to the conclusion that his kidney was close to failure. Eventually after tests among tests they did a colon biopsy and dx'ed him as having UC with Crohn's. The Toradol interacted with the unknown Crohns somehow and made him sick. I got MRSA two years ago & last year I stayed in pain 24/7 my doc dx'ed me with Fibromyalgia. I read on a few MRSA forums and probably 80% of the people had developed some kind of autoimmune disorder after being colonized with MRSA. And probably 2/3 of those folks had developed Crohn's or triggered undiagnosed Crohn"s. It just seems too coincidental to not have some relation to it.

 

[LittleC]

My son has no diagnosis at this point but he did have MRSA as a newborn. I have read that heavy antibiotic use and/or antibiotics (particularly in infancy) may be associated with increased ibd risk. Maybe it isn't the mrsa per se but the antibiotics?

interesting stuff.

 

[DustyKat]

Hmmmm, well I guess a trigger could have the potential to be either, infection or antibiotics. I know I have read many a time on this forum of people contracting symptoms of IBD following a course of antibiotics but it's a bit like the chicken and the egg...which came first.

In our own case antibiotics or infection were never in the scenario.

I hear what you are saying about the swab the doctor used but it also has to be kept in mind that Staphylococcus aureus is a naturally occurring bacteria on the skin of about 30% of the population, add to that increasing concern that community acquired (CA) MRSA is well and truly on the increase and therefore an increasing number of people are now carriers of this strain. It may be that your husband already had MRSA and the wound was the perfect environment in which to manifest itself.

How did you get MRSA? If he is a carrier it may have been from him.

Dusty. xxx