A team of researchers led by Elliott Dasenbrook, MD, MHS, assistant professor of medicine and pediatrics at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and associate director of the Adult Cystic Fibrosis Program at University Hospitals Case Medical Center’s Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital today published the findings from a major study about cystic fibrosis (CF) survival rates in the June 16 issue of JAMA.
Specifically, the study observed patients with CF who had methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) detected in their respiratory tract. Results show these patients have worse survival, approximately 1.3 times greater risk of death, compared to CF patients without MRSA. Dasenbrook’s team, including co-author Michael Konstan, MD, chairman of the Department of Pediatrics at University Hospitals Case Medical Center’s Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital and Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, studied more than 19,000 patients with CF to reach their conclusions.
The most common cause of death in CF is respiratory failure secondary to pulmonary infection. The prevalence of MRSA in the respiratory tract of individuals with CF has increased substantially in the past five years, and is now more than 20 percent (higher in urban areas) according to the article.
“Our study findings may prompt many doctors to reconsider how they care for CF patients,” says Dasenbrook. He adds, “Until now, some doctors weren’t aggressively treating patients with MRSA. Doctors often viewed MRSA to not be as important as other respiratory-tract infections. With our study findings, treatment patterns may change as the risk of death is 1.3 times greater for CF patients with MRSA.”
Konstan elaborates, “Identifying a specific risk factor like MRSA for shortened survival for a disease like CF provides a target for future research and clinical intervention.”
The study included 19,833 CF patients (ages 6 to 45 years) who were tracked in the United States’ Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Patient Registry between January 1996 and December 2006, with follow-up until December 2008. Various analytic models were used to compare survival between CF patients with and without respiratory tract MRSA.
