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Researchers say CA-MRSA attacks immune cells

Infection Control Monitor, November 16, 2007

Findings that community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or CA-MRSA, undermines the body's defenses by causing immune cells to disintegrate, may lead to better treatments for the infection.

Researchers discovered that the CA-MRSA strain secretes a class of staphylococcal peptides that have "a remarkable ability to recruit, activate, and subsequently lyse human neutrophiles" or immune cells, thus eliminating the main cellular defense against the infection. The findings, from a team of U.S. and German researchers, appear in the November 11 online edition of Nature Medicine.

The peptides are produced at high concentrations by standard CA-MRSA strains and contribute significantly to the strains' ability to cause disease, researchers said.

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