GERM WARFARE

By Christine Gorman

Of all the illnesses that can be picked up in the hospital, a staphylococcus infection is surely the most fearsome. The stealthy bacterium snakes along intravenous lines or seeps into surgical wounds, destroying skin and bones, poisoning blood, threatening death. For years it could be stopped by penicillin. Then it slowly became resistant to one antibiotic after another until finally only one, vancomycin, remained to subdue all staph strains. Now comes word that even that microbial barrier is falling.

Last week the Centers for Disease Control reported that a man in a Michigan hospital had contracted a staph infection that even vancomycin could not stem. It was just the second report of a vancomycin-resistant staph infection. The first case occurred in Japan last year when a baby became ill after heart surgery.

By using several antibiotics simultaneously, the doctors in Michigan brought their patient's infection under control. Even so, health officials suspect that vancomycin-resistant staph will soon appear in other U.S. hospitals as well. Calling for stringent antiseptic procedures, they urged doctors to report cases of vancomycin-resistant staph promptly to the CDC.

Bacteria, of course, don't become resistant on their own. Whenever antibiotics are used indiscriminately, mildly resistant bacteria survive and breed with one another, creating increasingly resistant germs. Pharmaceutical companies are racing to create new antibiotics that can replace vancomycin as the drug of last recourse. The leading candidate: Synercid, an experimental drug being developed by Rhone-Poulenc Rorer. Tests show that it should defeat even vancomycin-resistant staphylococci--at least until a tougher strain of bacteria evolves.

--By Christine Gorman