They submitted a study that was published Thursday in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, a publication of the American Society for Microbiology.
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The 49-year-old woman in Pennsylvania was infected with Escherichia coli that carried a gene for resistance against the antibiotic colistin.
As far as the potential for anti-resistant bacteria to spread, Laura Piddock, a professor of microbiology in the United Kingdom, told Reuters that she believes the use of antibiotics in livestock farming like, polymyxins, which reportedly include colistin (the “last resort” antibiotic), should be restricted. Researchers said that the bacteria may have developed resistance to colistin because pigs in China are always fed with the antibiotic.
In a development that the head USA public health official is grimly forecasting as “the end of the road” for antibiotics, a strain of the most fearsome antibiotic-resistant superbug was found in the urine of a 49-year-old Pennsylvania woman.
The Director of the CDC is calling Colistin Resistant E. Coli a nightmare bacteria and now it has reached the U.S.
According to the study which reported the bacteria, the superbug itself was infected with a particular DNA called a plasmid which in turn passed along a gene called mfr-1 which makes it resistant to colistin.
Experts have warned the arrival of this illness “heralds the emergence of truly pan-drug resistant bacteria” and fear that this could represent the “end of the road” for antibiotics.
The first such superbug has now been documented in the US, in a patient last month in Pennsylvania, as documented by military doctors.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration is working with the CDC and Department of Defense in “an appropriate and collaborative” response, the governor said in a statement, according to the Post. She had not traveled outside the United States within the past five months.
MRSN 388634 belongs to a rare E. coli sequence type that was first identified in 2008 from a urine culture in the United Kingdom and later identified from a bloodstream culture in Italy, McGann and colleagues wrote.
Following the revelation in China, scientists across the globe began searching for other bacteria containing the mcr-1 gene, and the bacteria have since been discovered in Europe and Canada.
For years, officials have been concerned that antibiotic-resistant bacteria could develop and not be affected by a known antibiotic. “It is the end of the road for antibiotics if we don’t do something”.
Georgiou says, eventually, bacteria will always become resistant to antibiotics.
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Commenting on the reports Dr Nasia Safdar, from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, said: “The results are very concerning”.
