MRSA Superbug Nearly Nonexistent in Norway—Here's Why

by Heidi Stevenson

4 January 2010

MRSA is a scourge in virtually all modern hospitals in every industrialized country, with the exception of Norway. While tens of thousands of American and European patients die each year from MRSA, it's a rare occurrence in Norway. How are they doing it? In the most simple of ways. In Norway, the problem was faced head-on. The cause—overprescription of antibiotics—was acknowledged. So they stopped overprescribing.

People didn't start dying from lack of antibiotics, but they did stop dying from MRSA.

MRSA, Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus, is a drug-resistant and virulent mutation of staphylococcus. It results from overuse of antibiotics, and exists because of their casual use. As with so many other microorganisms, the life cycle is very short. Many life-cycles can occur in a matter of hours. Any DNA mutation that results in drug resistance becomes the one most likely to survive in a host who's treated with drugs. Drug resistant bacterial infections are a natural result of routinely relying on antibiotics to resolve infections.

A Brief History of Drug Resistant Bacteria

Penicillin, of course, began the antibiotic revolution. Discovered by the Scotsman Alexander Fleming in 1928, it wasn't widely used until mass production was achieved in the mid-forties. It was first used on a wide scale towards the end of World War II for wounded US military personnel during the invasion of Normandy in 1944. By 1946, penicillin was widely used by non-military doctors.

Penicillin was quickly followed by a wide range of other antibiotics, such as streptomycin, chloramphenicol tetracycline, sulfa drugs, and anti-tuberculosis drugs.

It didn't take long for bacteria to develop drug resistance. Some strains of staphylococcus developed resistance almost immediately after penicillin's mass use by civilian doctors. By 1953, an outbreak of dysentery resulted in a strain of Shigella dysenteriae resistant to four drugs: chloramphenicol, tetracycline, streptomycin and all of the sulfonamides.

The Continuation of the Cause

In the face of the known problem of drug resistance, the medical profession simply increased its use of antibiotics, throwing them at virtually every illness or sniffle, no matter how mild, even when the infection had nothing to do with bacteria. They became used routinely as preventatives. Even dentists prescribe them before dental procedures.

Now, when MRSA deaths exceed AIDS deaths in the US, doctors routinely overprescribe. I hate to think of all the people I've spoken with recently, in both the US and UK, whose doctors have given them antiobiotics for colds, a mild viral condition that is completely immune to any antibiotic.

Norway's Solution

Obviously, the medical profession has largely hidden its collective heads in the sand. Norway, though, faced the problem head-on about 25 years ago in the 1980s.

They didn't try to throw studies at it. They didn't look for a technological fix. Instead, they addressed the cause: overuse of antibiotics. The rational decision to drastically limit their use was made. A rigorous program was instituted to isolate anyone diagnosed with MRSA, require that medical personnel who've come into contact with it stay home, track each case, and test anyone who's come into contact with the patient.

The result has been a near end to MRSA, with the exception of people who enter the country with it. And refusing to use antibiotics except when absolutely necessary hasn't harmed Norwegians' health. The UN's statistics indicate that Norwegians' longevity is 14^th in the world, while the UK's is 22^nd, and the US's is 38^th.

MRSA is a mutation of staph infections. In Norway, the percent of MRSA staph infections is now about 1 percent. In Japan, it's about 80 percent.

Is It Too Late for the Rest of the World?

In 2004, microbiologist Lynne Liebowitz instituted a program of limited antibiotics use at Queen Elizabeth Hospital at King's Lynn in the UK. The program set up was for targeted use. That is, broad-range antibiotics were largely eliminated, and only narrow-spectrum ones that target only the specific bacteria involved in a disease were used. As Dr. Liebowitz stated,

Treating any patient with an antibiotic kills off all the bacteria that are sensitive to that particular drug, while allowing resistant strains to multiply and spread

Most antibiotic use was limited to critical care, terminally ill, and surgical patients.

In six months, the number of MRSA cases was cut by 75 percent.

Dr. Liebowitz's comment about her success at Queen Elizabeth Hospital and four others where her methods have been initiated is

It's really very upsetting that some patients are dying from infections which could be prevented. It's wrong.

The problem couldn't be stated more clearly. One must wonder how many of the people who've died from MRSA would be alive today if the medical profession hadn't been so gung-ho to keep prescribing antibiotics when they're either useless or unnecessary.

The MRSA problem in hospitals is clearly resolvable. Because of doctors' insistence on continuing to prescribe antibiotics recklessly, thousands of people have died and the problem has spread outside hospitals. When will the medical profession take the simple steps required to end this scourge?