Ispectrum Magazine Ispectrum Magazine #12 | Page 20

One form of Staphylococcus aureus bacteria known as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, causes a range of illnesses, from skin and wound infections to pneumonia and bloodstream infections that can cause sepsis and death. 19 Photo credit:National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and PDR. These help to categorize different antibiotics’ and determine how they would be tested for each relevant bacterium, how to define resistance within an antimicrobial category and be epidemiologically meaningful. For example penicillin using the antimicrobial agent ampicillin, the bacterium Citrobacter koseri (C. koseri) which contributes to initiate brain abscess’s during meningitis, was found to be resistant. It is important to subcategorise and organise the findings of these results to e n s u r e which strains of resistance are increasing and eventually, how we will prevent them. This new way of categoriz- tiative by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the centres for disease Control and Prevention (CDC), to create a standardized international terminology with which to describe acquired resistance profiles in Staphylococcus aureus, Enterococus spp, Enterobacteria (other than salmonella and shigella), pseudomonas aeruginosa and Acinetobacter spp., all bacteria often responsible for healthcareassociated infections and prone to multidrug resistance7”. The result of this was creating three different subcategories for Antibiotics to be placed: MDR, XDR,