Super-bug coated mice plague New York City

Super-bug coated mice plague New York City

The new millennium is turning out to have a lot more in common with the 21st century B.C. than I would have originally forecast!

It appears that not only are the streets of San Francisco laden with disease, but researchers have now found that 25 percent of the mice inhabiting New York City carry bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics.

Tests conducted by a team from Columbia University on 416 mice collected in seven New York City-area locations in just over a year revealed house mice are “carriers of several gastrointestinal disease-causing agents,” including C. diff, E. coli and Salmonella, among others, according to a study published in the American Society for Microbiology on Tuesday.

“We found a whole series of bacteria that are associated with human disease,” Dr. W. Ian Lipkin, a senior author of the study, told the New York Daily News. “And many of these bacteria had evidence of antibiotic resistance chain.”

Therefore, humans exposed to infected mice – through direct contact, droppings or urine – would have a hard time killing the germs, which means any potential illnesses contracted from the rodents could turn deadly.

Reports also revealed the costs of treating the disease has escalated because of the resistance bacterial strains have developed to standard treatments, doubling since 2002.

Kenneth E. Thorpe, Ph.D., from the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University in Atlanta, and colleagues used data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey to estimate the incremental health care costs of treating a resistant infection, as well as the total national costs of treating such infections.

The researchers found that antibiotic resistance added $1,383 to the cost of treating a patient with a bacterial infection. Based on 2014 estimates of antibiotic-resistant infections, this amounts to a national cost of $2.2 billion annually.

On the other coast, other vermin continue to plague citizens. I noted that areas of California were having infestations of the swamp-dwelling rodent known as nutria. Now, the state of California has declared an official nutria emergency.

The state of California is declaring an emergency over a non-native species of rodent being seen with increasing frequency near the San Joaquin Delta.

Wildlife teams are being deployed to battle a type of giant river rat called nutria.

Originally from South America, the large, 20-pound rodents were first spotted in Central California about a year ago.

But now, for the first time, the animal has been found west of Stockton in the heart of the Delta.

I sure hope the Nutria don’t harm the Delta Smelt.

Finally, a family in California, whose son was scarred by bedbug bites, has been awarded nearly $1.6 million by a civil jury.

It was the highest amount ever paid to a single family in a bedbug case in the United States, according to the family’s lawyer.

Lilliana Martinez, 34, said that the problem began in 2012, two years after she and her husband moved into an apartment in Inglewood, Calif. They discovered that their 3-year-old son, Jorge Maravilla, had red spots all over his body, including on his face.

Concerned, they took him to the hospital. The diagnosis? Bug bites.

“As soon as I found out, I was horrified, because I had never seen something like that before,” she said.

I swear I just saw a movie covering all of this news a couple of weeks ago!

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