Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), is an antibiotic-resistant form of bacteria that can cause life-threatening skin or bloodstream infections and pneumonia. It commonly causes painful skin boils and is easily transmitted through skin-to-skin contact of cuts and scrapes. MRSA evolved from the Staphyloccoccus aureus bacterium, commonly referred to as “staph”, after antibiotics were misused or overused to treat infections starting in the 1940s. Staph infections are now resistant to many variations of penicillin-like antibiotics, sometimes causing widespread infection. Dr. Laura E. Crotty Alexander, Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine at UC San Diego, conducted a study that suggests cigarette smoke can make MRSA even more resistant to conventional treatments.
Image Source: R Parulan Jr.
A team of researchers grew MRSA in two different environments–one with cigarette smoke extract and one without–and tested each sample with different kinds of attacks typically used by the immune system. When they mixed each MRSA culture mix with immune cells, they found that while the bacteria were equally absorbed by the immune cells, the MRSA bacteria grown in smoke extract were more resistant to chemical attacks and antimicrobial proteins attacks. In mice, the smoke-grown cultures survived longer and caused more fatal cases of pneumonia. They also found that the level of bacterial resistance increased with the amount of smoke extract used. Smoke-exposed MRSA were also better at attacking and invading immune cells.
So far, research has only been conducted using mice models, but future research could determine whether the same effects are found among human smokers.
Feature Image Source: CIGARETTE by Fried Dough
