Infants have a unique risk because their immune systems are immature. And because babies have the highest rates of antibiotic use, they tend to have the highest rates of drug-resistant infections. Moreover, additional research suggests that MRSA may actually be on the rise in babies. Doctors at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston found that the proportion of infections in infants caused by resistant staph rose from 50 percent in 2001 to 83 percent in 2005. Even more worrisome, they found that the number of infections in newborns caused by the community form of the disease (as opposed to the types that circulate in hospitals) also increased every year between 2001 and 2005. This finding is particularly alarming because it can be nearly impossible to know where the child picked it up. The bug is easily transmitted by simple skin-to-skin contact in homes, daycare centers, places of worship, and stores.

Like Andy's parents, Scott Smith and his wife have no idea how their 14-month-old son, Bryce, caught a form of MRSA that attacked his lungs in 2005.

"At first we thought, 'Wow, he's over a year old and this is his first cold,'" says Smith, 45. But then they noticed his breathing had become rapid, and he spiked a high fever.

Instead of a cold, Bryce had developed resistant pneumonia, and he spent 55 days in the hospital before finally being cured with vancomycin, known as the drug of last resort. "We were always very careful," says Smith, who lives in San Diego. "You just never think about the real danger from a microscopic bug like this." And MRSA is far from the only drug-resistant bug that can affect babies.

A host of ailments, including ear infections, tuberculosis, and foodborne illnesses like salmonella, have evolved strains that can survive treatment with common antibiotics. Last year, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published a report on nine children who couldn't be cured of persistent ear infections with any child-approved drug (that's 18 antibiotics) or ear tubes. The germ could only be beat with a drug approved for adults.

Deep breath.

Although the news thus far is enough to turn the most casual parents into sanitizer-toting germaphobes, most doctors say there's little reason to turn concern into panic. "People are getting more frightened than necessary," says Robert Frenck, Jr., M.D., professor of pediatrics at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. That's because MRSA and most resistant infections are still vulnerable to at least some antibiotics, says Dr. Frenck. Our job is to help keep it that way.

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