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Section of Pediatric Infectious Disease

Faculty & Research Teams

Robert S. Daum, MDRobert S. Daum, MD

Robert S. Daum, MD
Professor of Pediatrics

M.D., McGill University
Residency, Montreal Children’s Hospital
Fellowship, Harvard University, Children’s Hospital and Medical Center

Phone: 773/702-3853
Email: rdaum@peds.bsd.uchicago.edu

Clinical Interests

Memberships

Research Summary

Professor Bob Daum’s research is focused on, “Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus,” or MRSA. Staphylococcus aureus is an important pathogen for children and adults. Both healthy and immunocompromised patients get infected with this major pathogen in both the community setting and in the hospital milieu. This ancient pathogen has always posed a clinical therapeutic challenge and has been able to devise strategies to become resistant to every antibiotic ever licensed.

The problem of methicillin resistance has posed a special concern. The term, “Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus,” or MRSA, has been used to describe S. aureus organisms that are resistant to all members of the penicillin and cephalosporin family, the so-called ß-lactam classes of antibiotics. Thus infection with MRSA organisms leaves clinicians few options for therapy.

MRSA organisms have until recently, been confined to the hospital environment; healthy people seldom encountered these difficult-to-treat pathogens. At the University of Chicago Hospitals in the late 1990s, a research team in the Infectious Disease Section, spearheaded by Robert Daum, MD, Betsy Herold, and Susan Boyle, documented the novel observation that healthy children from the community were being hospitalized with severe MRSA infections. This new finding has led to the identification of a novel genetic element in these community-acquired MRSA strains that appears to be promiscuous. That is to say, this novel genetic element appears to be able to spread from staphylococcal strain to staphylococcal strain, converting susceptible strains to resistant strains. The movement of this element accounts for the phenomenon now observed in Chicago and many medical centers in the Unites States and around the world where MRSA strains now freely circulate in the community. This is an important development for clinicians because it has virtually ended the use of commonly available and inexpensive ß-lactam antibiotics used to treat these patients in everyday clinical practice.

At the scientific level, study of the genetic elements mediating this resistance has been fascinating. The mobility of these elements and the mechanism by which they move from strain to strain is not yet understood. Moreover, these elements have not been described in bacteria before and represent a novel evolutionary strategy for bacteria to transfer genes. Active research in the Section of Infectious Disease is currently focused on new treatment strategies for these community-onset MRSA infections as well as on understanding the scientific basis for spread from strain to strain.

Lab Members

Publications

View a partial list of Robert Daum’s publications through the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed online database