An overwhelming segment of the population has come to depend on antibiotics as the magic bullet for all ailments.

However, one Athens-Limestone Hospital official said Tuesday that the use of two popular antibiotics since 1998 accounts for the unusually high incidence of methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus in this area. MRSA is a drug-resistant staph infection carried even on the skin of healthy people.

Dr. Don Stalons, the hospital’s infection-control director, said the most highly publicized case of MRSA in this area resulted in the December 2004 death of 14-year-old Hunter Bauer of Athens.

Stalons made his remarks at the hospital’s annual luncheon at the Beasley Center.

The alarming increase of MRSA in patients admitted to the emergency with staph infections makes it inevitable there will be more serious or fatal infections, he said.

Bauer died at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital after a seven-week battle against MRSA. It enters the blood when the skin is broken. Depending on the strain of the staph, it can be resistant to most known antibiotics. Frequent victims of the infection are young, physically active athletes in contact sports such as football. Bacteria can spread easily through cuts and abrasions and skin-to-skin contact. Hunter, an eighth-grade football player at Athens Middle School, began complaining of knee pain. When the pain continued, his parents took him to an orthopedist who prescribed pain medicine and physical therapy. He began running a fever, having flu-like symptoms and complaining of thirst.

In the night, when he began to have difficulty breathing and was too weak to stand, his parents took him to the Athens-Limestone Hospital. He was transferred to Children’s Hospital in Huntsville and then to Vanderbilt.

“Sixty-four percent of the patients admitted to the emergency room for staph are MRSA positive,” Stalons said. “That is 24 percent above the national average of 40 percent.”

Stalons said in 1998 two popular antibiotics— Cipro and Levaquin – were introduced and the incidence of MRSA, which was first identified in the early 1960s, has sharply climbed.

“These two drugs have the peculiarity of inducing resistance overreaction,” Stalons said. “As a nation, 50 percent of antibiotics are prescribed inappropriately. We are in a mess because of the overuse of antibiotics. That is why there is a significant increase of MRSA in this community.”

Stalons said it is of particular interest to the hospital because it will change the way patients are admitted. He said MRSA is capable of replicating 8 million times over 24 hours.

“This is why it wreaks havoc, it can replicate faster than any organism we know,” he said.

There is a test that will culture the organism and return results in two hours.

“This will change the way we practice and admit patients,” he said. “It is gene application technology and it requires a sizable investment from the hospital.”

The investment is worth it because both accrediting agencies for both private and public insurers will not approve payment for hospital-acquired staph infections, he said.

“We must keep these bugs out of the hospital,” Stalons said. “We’ve gotten ourselves into a mess and we have to dig our way out.”