A bacteria resistant to an antibiotic used as a last resort has been detected in the United States, scientists announced on Thursday. The 49-year-old was being treated for a urinary tract infection when a common variety of E Coli bacteria was found in her gut.
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The Centers for Disease Control has a new warning about a “super-bug” that is resistant to antibiotics. “We haven’t found a single one of these antibiotics that is actually toxic”, says Dr. David Andes, co-principal investigator of the study. “They are able to develeop resistance to antibiotics unfortunately much more quickly than we are able to make antibiotics to kill those bacteria”. It is a superbug that does not respond to antibiotics, even with Colistin, which the doctors use as the last remedy when most antibiotics fail. However, Dr. Beth Bell from the CDC said: “Luckily [we] haven’t seen actual bacteria that are resistant to every single antibiotic”.
“Based on that, we’re predicting it would work against infections that could be caused by bacteria that are resistant to available antibiotics”, Payne said.
In this latest case in Pennsylvania, the CDC is working with state health officials to interview the woman and her family to try to figure out how she might have picked up the strain.
The superbug doctors are freaking out about is now in the U.S.
“(This) heralds the emergence of truly pan-drug resistant bacteria”, said the study, which was conducted by the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
Mcr-1 caused a public health panic in China previous year, when it was found in both livestock and people. As for whether the Pennsylvania case means the antibiotic era is ending, he said, “People have been saying that for about 20 years”.
In a study published this week in the Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, a publication of the American Society for Microbiology, the Pentagon researchers said the bacteria particularly resisted the antibiotic called colistin.
“We know now that the more we look, the more we are going to find”, he added.
“It was an old antibiotic, but it was the only one left for what I called nightmare bacteria, carbapenem-resistant enterobacteriaceae, or CRE”, Frieden said according to CNBC.
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Health officials are reporting the first USA case of a human infected with a “superbug” – a drug-resistant infection that leaves it victims with few, if any, options for treatment. “Since then, we’ve had a drying up of the research and development pipeline of antibiotics”, explained Dr. Walsh.
