Acinetobacter infection on my breast!

[milkmamma]

Not only do I have thrush and have been treating it for the past month with diflucan and probiotic/prebiotics...etc...now I have these weird bumps around my nipple. My midwife did a culture on it and found it was a heavy growth of Acinetobacter. They need to treat me with antibiotics. I still have thrush! How am I supposed to get rid of thrush while on antibiotics? What the heck is Acinetobacter????

I have a doctor appt for my son and I at my family doctor's tomorrow just to make sure that they agree with my midwife and see if they need to check out the baby for an infection.

Anyone else ever heard of this or how about having to take antibiotics while already suffering from an awful case of thrush??? Help me please!

[Limabean1975]

Let me preface this by saying I really have no real idea what I am talking about...but, I recently heard that there's a new thought amongst many lactation consultants that many (most?) cases of thrush are NOT in fact thrush/yeast, but a bacterial infection. I wish I could give you a source for this information but I don't have one. Anyway, it may be that you don't have thrush at all. Perhaps continue with natural treatments for thrush (probiotics, grapefruit seed extract, etc - see kellymom.com) while treating the bacterial infection, and see what happens.

[greenthumb3]

Hey, hope this doesn't freak you out too much, but this is what wikipedia had on it: Treatment ideas there as well. Sounds like something passed around in hospitals.

Acinetobacter species are generally considered nonpathogenic to healthy individuals. However, several species persist in hospital environments and cause severe, life-threatening infections in compromised patients.[1] The spectrum of antibiotic resistances of these organisms together with their survival capabilities make them a threat to hospitals as documented by recurring outbreaks both in highly developed countries and elsewhere. An important factor for their pathogenic potential is probably an efficient means of horizontal gene transfer even though such a mechanism has so far only been observed and analyzed in Acinetobacter baylyi, a species that lives in the soil and has never been associated with infections.[1]

Most infections occur in immunocompromised individuals, and the strain A. baumannii is the second most commonly isolated nonfermenting bacteria in human specimens.

Acinetobacter is frequently isolated in nosocomial infections and is especially prevalent in intensive care units, where both sporadic cases as well as epidemic and endemic occurrence is common. A. baumannii is a frequent cause of nosocomial pneumonia, especially of late-onset ventilator associated pneumonia. It can cause various other infections including skin and wound infections, bacteremia, and meningitis, but A. lwoffi is mostly responsible for the latter. A. baumannii can survive on the human skin or dry surfaces for weeks.

Ethanol has been found to stimulate the virulence of A. baumanniiin meiofaunal host model studies.[3] Tests on infected nematode worms dosed with ethanol found that the worms laid fewer eggs and their life spans were only 80% of worms infected with a non-ethanol responsive strain of A. baumannii.

Since the start of the Iraq War, over 700 U.S. soldiers have been infected or colonized by A. baumannii. Four civilians undergoing treatment for serious illnesses at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., contracted A. baumannii infections and died. At Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, a U.S. military hospital in Germany, another civilian under treatment, a 63-year-old German woman, contracted the same strain of A. baumannii infecting troops in the facility and also died. These infections appear to have been hospital acquired. [1]

and from the Center of Disease Control.

[lexbeach]

I'm sorry, mama!

It sounds like your immune system could use some help. Regardless of what happens with the thrush and this new bacteria, I would focus also on boosting your immune system in whatever way you can. Eating well, sleeping well, immune-supporting herbs, acupuncture, and eliminating anything potentially immune-suppressing from your life would all be good things to focus on.

I had systemic yeast for six months after my twins were born (started as thrush and spread), which is another thing that can happen when the immune system is not at its best. I finally kicked it after eliminating everything I was allergic to from my life (including our beloved kitty), eating really well (no processed anything, no sugar (well, duh), lots of vegetables and good quality protein), and making sure I got enough sleep (not so easy with exclusively breastfed twins, but I managed to find a way).

Also, if you've been treating your thrush with diflucan for a month without any improvement, I too would question the diagnosis of thrush. Perhaps it's been this other bacteria all along, simply disguising itself as thrush? Many things can present in the same way that thrush does, and the best way to know if it's actually thrush is to treat it like it is, and if it IS yeast, the condition usually improves very quickly. In my case, while I did have thrush and systemic yeast (including ring worm on my breasts!), I also had Raynaud's and was plagued by plugged ducts--the combination of which produced the exact same symptoms as thrush. So it's possible that I continued treating myself for thrush well after it had resolved, when I was really just feeling the affects of the other issues.



Lex

[milkmamma]

So it turns out that anyone could test positive for this bacteria or many other ones. I went to my general doctor today and she looked over the test and everything and said that if you swab someone's skin it is likely to come back with any number of bacterias. Doesn't mean they are bad. She was impressed that it was the only bacteria that was present, I must be super duper clean!

As long as I don't get any more patches of this on my breast she is ok with me forgoing the antibiotics. My yeast symptoms are finally subsiding and I am FINALLY nursing with very little pain and absolutely no pain in my ducts afterwards. I would hate to introduce antibiotics to my system at this point.

Thanks of the support! I am definitely going to be working on boosting my immune system. Too bad a trip to a tropical island isn't in the budget...I think that would help in so many ways!

[veganone]

I posted on your other thread as well, and I will say I have no experience with that bacteria, but I had what was diagnosed and treated as thrush for months with exactly the same symptoms as thrush. I tested positive for a "normal" skin bacteria that somehow had overgrown in me. A round of Azithromycin and it was GONE. The bacteria caused the thrush-like symptoms, so don't be too scared of the abx, they may help...