A form of the superbug MRSA has killed patients in a British hospital for the first time, public health officials said today.
Two people - a patient and a healthcare worker - died in September at a West Midlands hospital after contracting the aggressive strain of MRSA, the Health Protection Agency (HPA) said.
An investigation by the HPA, which monitors infectious diseases, found eight people tested positive for Panton-Valentine Leukocidin community-associated MRSA, commonly known as PVL. Four of those people developed an infection, two of whom subsequently died.
In a statement today the agency said: "This outbreak is the first time transmission and deaths due to this strain are known to have occurred in a healthcare setting in England and Wales."
Most MRSA infections in UK hospitals occur in frail elderly patients, but PVL commonly affects healthy young people, though usually in the community.
Angela Kearns, of the HPA, said the most commons symptoms of PVL infections were minor skin infections, such as boils and pimples, which could be treated successfully with everyday antibiotics. But occasionally PVL led to a more severe infection, including a form of pneumonia that could kill in 24 hours.
The microbiologist Mark Enright, of Imperial College, London, said the toxins in PVL destroyed white blood cells, leaving the sufferer unable to fight infection.
Dr Enright said: "This type of MRSA is good at moving from patients to nurses. When it gets into a hospital it rapidly becomes the dominant strain of MRSA as it is so aggressive. If you get pneumonia with this strain of MRSA the mortality rate is 50%."
Michael Summers, a trustee for the Patients Association, said it had already received many calls on its helpline from patients worried about the virulent MRSA strain.
He said: "It kills in such a short space of time and it's infecting the young as well as the elderly. It's going to be very concerning to patients.
"Some people are already delaying their surgery because of MRSA. PVL will be an additional worry."
The HPA issued doctors with guidance about PVL last year after it emerged that a young Marine recruit may have died from it in Devon.
Richard Campbell-Smith, 18, was four weeks from the end of his 32-week course at the Commando Training Centre in Lympstone, when he reportedly scratched his legs while running on October 31 2004.
He was admitted to the medical unit, and later taken to the Royal Devon and Exeter hospital where he died on November 2.
A postmortem examination showed heart and respiratory failure, and traces of PVL were later found.
A medical expert at his inquest in Exeter revealed the disease was thought to have died out in the 1950s - but she had seen two cases in nine weeks, and wanted to alert the public and medics to its presence.
