The much-ballyhooed "flesh-eating bacteria" is neither new nor a major health threat, says Indiana University microbiologist George Hegeman.
"There are diseases that occasionally crop up anew around the world, but this is clearly not one of them," Hegeman says of the bacterium called Group A streptococcus.A small number of Group A bacterial infections have occurred recently in Europe and the United States, and newspapers have nick-named the illness "galloping gangrene."
Group A, which mostly causes throat infections and scarlet fever, has been around for thousands of years, Hegeman says, and a small percentage of cases produce a poison that quickly destroys human tissue.
There's no truth to rumors that Group A poison is impervious to penicillin and other antibiotics, Hegeman adds. But the illness should be treated with antibiotics swiftly before it can build up a barrier of dead tissue that resists antibiotics. And if the bacteria do build a barrier, surgeons can remove it.
"There has been no unusal outbreak of such cases," Hegeman said. "There is no reason for public worry about an epidemic."
- Don Kirkman