The case – a urinary tract infection of a 49-year-old Pennsylvania woman – was reported in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, a publication of the American Society for Microbiology.
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Dr. Tom Frieden, the director at Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the Washington Post this recent discovery of the first MCR-1 on E. coli in the United States has the potential to lead to one of these nightmare scenarios.
“We know now that the more we look, the more we are going to find”. Upon DNA analysis, researchers determined that the E. coli is resistant to colistin because it carries a colistin resistance gene called mcr-1 on a circular piece of DNA called a plasmid.
“I’ve supported legislation and participated in hearings on this issue and believe that antibiotic resistant bacteria present an urgent public health problem that we must focus on intensively”, Casey said in a statement.
Researchers, who published their findings Thursday, fear the mcr-1 gene could be passed on to other bacteria that aren’t treatable with other antibiotics. On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Defense announced that the first known case of a carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) infection had hit the United States, and everyone started panicking. “The medicine cabinet is empty for some patients”.
Scientists have warned for years that antibiotic-resistant bacteria, such as the Klebsiella shown in a petri dish above, could harbor a future where routine operations could turn deadly..
“We need to inform in different ways, all over the world, why it’s crucial we stop treating our antibiotics like candies”, said economist Jim O’Neil in an account by the BBC. “It is the end of the road unless we act urgently”.
“We need to do a very comprehensive job of protecting antibiotics, so we can have them and our children can have them”, Frieden added. According to the CDC, there were 2 million antibiotic resistant infections in 2013.
The Pennsylvania Department of Health acknowledged the case, but would not release any details. There are only a few classes of antibiotics to treat bacterial infections to begin with, experts say.
The good news was that the woman’s infection was susceptible to a handful of antibiotics, including carbapenems, said study co-author Kurt Schaecher, service chief for the infectious disease lab at Walter Reed.
However, Dr Beth Bell, also from the CDC, said in an interview: “Luckily haven’t seen actual bacteria that are resistant to every single antibiotic”.
Though the case marks the first known appearance of a pathogen with the MCR-1 gene in the USA, such bacteria strains have been appearing for years in other parts of the world.
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Bacteria develop antibiotic resistance in two ways.
