Colistin, introduced in the 1950s, is used to treat multidrug resistant bacterial infections known as carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE). Defense Department researchers believe that the woman carried a strain of E. coli resistant to the antibiotic colistin, reports a study in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, a publication of the American Society for Microbiology.
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Colistin is the antibiotic of last resort for particularly unsafe types of superbugs, including a family of bacteria known as CRE, which health officials have dubbed “nightmare bacteria”.
If you haven’t gotten the wake-up call about the dangers of using antibiotics, don’t hit snooze on this one: Doctors have found an antibiotic-resistant superbug in a Pennsylvania woman.
The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services reports that they found a similar Colistin-resistant E. Coli in a pig intestine in the United States – but there is no reported correlation between the woman and the pig intestine.
Also of note: colistin is used relatively infrequently in the USA, said Dr. Nirav Patel, an assistant professor of infectious diseases at St. Louis University, “thus it is concerning that even in this environment, the resistance gene has been identified”. What that means is that the strain of E. coli the woman contracted carries a gene on a portion of DNA called a plasmid. Washing hands and using antibiotics responsibly is a must to prevent the spread of superbugs.
If antibiotic resistance has been known for years, why the urgency now? With that kind of sporadic sexual transmission, she should have seen many different strains.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, there were two million antibiotic resistant infections in 2013.
“This is another piece of a really nasty puzzle that we didn’t want to see here”, said Dr. Beth Bell, who oversees CDC’s emerging infectious diseases programs.
The existence of MCR was reported for the first time just last November, in a report by British and Chinese researchers who said they had found the gene in people, animals, and meat in several areas of China. “There’s no organized infrastructure to get a good handle about resistance rates across communities”, says Kalpana Gupta, an infectious disease specialist at Boston University.
Every year 700,000 people die because of superbugs around the world, according to the most recent United Kingdom sponsored report on antimicrobial resistance.
Now in the United States, half of all antibiotic prescriptions for people may be inappropriate. Not long ago, the World Health Organization stated antibiotic-resistant superbugs are a tremendous threat to global health. But make no mistake, we’re not out of antibiotics, we simply need to get more of them on the market. And the development of new antibiotics is falling behind.
And there is also some promising new research aimed at making old antibiotics new again.
He is the founder of EZC Pak, an immunity product for doctors and patients to reduce inappropriate antibiotic prescriptions for upper respiratory infections, which are the most common infection in humans.
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Misuse and overuse of antibiotics is one of the main reasons resistance is spreading. Federal officials said Thursday that colistin-resistant E. coli has also been found in a pig in the United States, but there was nothing to link the finding to the Pennsylvania case.
