In an interview yesterday, CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden said the new report shows the “end of the road isn’t very far away for antibiotics”, adding that the situation may arise where a patient with a UTI can not be treated. What makes this “superbug” scarier is its potential to spread colistin resistance to other types of bacteria that are already highly resistant to multiple drugs, infectious disease experts said. This is a first in the United States.
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A pig in the USA was also found to have an antibiotic-resistant strain of E.coli – but there is no link to the Pennsylvania case. These are intestinal bacteria resistant to antibiotics typically reserved for resistant bacteria. This new bacteria was found in a Pennsylvania woman with a urinary tract infection.
In the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, investigators from the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) and the Multidrug Resistant Organism Repository and Surveillance Network (MRSN) reveal the first case of colistin resistance in the U.S.
A 49-year-old Pennsylvania woman showed the presence of a rare kind of E. coli infection that is resistant to antibiotics, even Colistin, which doctors sometimes use as a last resort when other antibiotics fail.
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Pennsylvania health officials are investigating to try to determine how the woman – who has not recently traveled outside of the United States – became infected with the colistin-resistant E. coli.
The Associated Press reported that the CDC is working with Pennsylvania health officials to interview the woman and her family to find out how she might have picked up the bug. The World Health Organization calls antibiotic resistance “one of the biggest threats to global health today”, and recommends only using antibiotics when prescribed by a medical professional, always taking the full prescription, and never using leftover antibiotics.
The Director of the CDC says we can expect to see more superbugs in the near future.
Tom Frieden said “The medicine cabinet is empty for some patients”. Frieden, who often warns doctors against overuse of antibiotics, urged scientists to develop new drugs quickly.
“When we had our golden age of antibiotics in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, we had very minimal resistant bacteria, we had a ton of new antibiotics come to market”.
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Antibiotic resistance causes at least 2 million illnesses and 23,000 deaths annually, according to the CDC.
