What would cause a deep lung staph infection?

When I worked in day care, children often spread viruses from one to another and it can turn into something else if the child has a weak immune system.

Nothing in the yard. We’re all colonized with staph on our skin, and unfortunately, community acquired MRSA (methicillin resistant staph aureus) is becoming an all too common occurrence.

@shilolo We now have it in our veterinary clinic.

“What would cause a deep lung staph infection?”

Bad luck, mostly. As @shilolo points out, we all carry staph on our skin and many folks even have them in their noses but suffer no ill effects. However, if a person’s immune system is not working up to par, the staph that normally co-exist with the person can get a foothold inside and cause an infection. Typically, we get staph infections when there is a breach in our skin that allows staph to infect the tissues underlying the skin, or even get into the blood stream.

Uncommonly, staph can get into the lungs and cause pneumonia. Usually this happens because the person is already sick with something else or has a problem such as asthma, which makes the lungs more susceptible to infection.

Or as this site puts it:

“The most common type of staph lung infection is Staphylococcus pneumonia. The symptoms can include swelling, inflammation and fluid buildup in the lungs. In severe cases, the S. aureus pneumonia can even lead to the development of abscesses in the lungs. Predominately, those that develop S. aureus pneumonia already suffered from a previously existing lung condition or lung damage, increasing susceptibility to the infection.”

Thus the little boy is surrounded by staph colonies all the time. Possibly if he suffers from asthma, or an immune deficiency such as alphaglobulinanemia, or if he was fighting off a virus, his body’s guard was down and he started up an infection. Perhaps he had a bit of a sore throat and the bacteria causing that managed to migrate into the lungs.

This site talks about the causes of various staph infections.

In any case, I hope that this particular infection is not one of the “superbug” sorts, and that it does respond quickly to antibiotics.

thanks, people.