Its presence made the pathogen resistant to the esteemed antibiotic colistin.
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These and similar isolates are unlikely to cause hard to treat infections at this time.
While Castanheira said the current strains stand a lesser chance of causing difficult-to-treat infections now that new drugs have been approved for use, the MCR-1 gene is still causing fear in the medical community.
In this case, the bacteria were genetically resistant to colistin but not to other forms of antibiotics that could be used to kill the E. coli.
In the first USA patient found to have colistin-resistant E. coli, the bacteria was also resistant to first-line antibiotics.
Researchers found the “superbug” MCR-which is actually a gene carried by gut bacteria such as E. Coli-in a bacterial sample from a patient treated in NYC last May. This particular gene is carried on a little cassette called a plasmid that bacteria can easily pass around, even to other species of bacteria.
Researchers have identified a second sample of human bacteria containing the MCR-1 gene in the United States, according to a study released today.
This type of E. Coli has a gene known as mcr-1, which is resistant to most known antibiotics.
Medical and health experts in the United States have deemed the discovery of the MCR-1 gene exceptionally “disturbing”, Cubic Lane reports.
Medscape also says that the authors of the research informed that they still do not know if the mcr-1 gene is encoded in the bacterial chromosome or a plasmid.
The 19 included a strain of E. coli originally recovered from the NY patient in 2015, said Mariana Castanheira, director for molecular and microbiology at JMI. “For example, sexually transmitted diseases, such as gonorrhea, have become resistant to the routine antibiotics we would normally give”. Meanwhile, it says the pharmaceutical industry should be developing new antibiotics-though there are a few such drugs in development, the World Health Organization notes, they’re not expected to be effective against the most risky antibiotic-resistant germs, and the larger pharmaceutical companies haven’t been doing much work on antibiotic development for a while, mostly because the drugs, which are usually prescribed for only the short term, aren’t particularly profitable. The federal funding will help pay for more-sensitive equipment to test for antibiotic resistance in bacteria samples provided by hospitals. Secondly, Schaffner says that antibiotics can not be used as freely as they are employed in the food industry. “No. 3, we need to energize and create environments so pharmaceutical companies will once again start” developing antibiotics.
But the new report found the NY case in 2015, and Castanheira said it’s likely colistin-resistant bacteria were in the United States before that.
Italian researchers, meanwhile, said they detected a variant of the MCR-1 gene, which they called MCR-1.2, in Klebsiella pneumoniae.
Jean Patel, Deputy Director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Office of Antimicrobial Resistance, was of the view, “I think we can expect more cases are going to be reported”. There are approximately 100 trillion good bacteria inside our bodies that outnumber our own cells 10 to 1.
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The CDC is trying to establish seven regional laboratories this fall that will have the capacity to do further researcher on a broad range of antimicrobial resistance.
