First US case of bacteria resistant to last-resort antibiotic
US health officials expressed grave concern as they report the country’s first case of a patient with an infection resistant to a last-resort antibiotic and that the superbug could pose serious danger for routine infections if it spreads.
Thomas Frieden, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a National Press Club luncheon in Washington, DC, that the bacteria was resistant to colistin, an antibiotic that is reserved for use against “nightmare bacteria”. This is in reference to the urinary tract infection of a 49-year-old Pennsylvania woman who had not traveled within the prior five months.
The infection was reported in a study appearing in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, a publication of the American Society for Microbiology. It said the superbug itself had first been infected with a tiny piece of DNA called a plasmid, which passed along a gene called mcr-1 that confers resistance to colistin.
“(This) heralds the emergence of truly pan-drug resistant bacteria,” said the study, which was conducted by the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. “To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of mcr-1 in the USA.”
The patient visited a clinic on April 26 with symptoms of a urinary tract infection, according to the study, which did not describe her current condition. The study said continued surveillance to determine the true frequency of the gene in the United States is critical.
Dr. Gail Cassell, a microbiologist and senior lecturer at Harvard Medical School, said that it is dangerous they would assume it can be spread quickly, even in a hospital environment, if it is not well-contained.But she also said the potential speed of its spread will not be known until more is learned about how the Pennsylvania patient was infected, and how present the colistin-resistant superbug is in the United States and globally.
In the United States, antibiotic resistance has been blamed for at least 2 million illnesses and 23,000 deaths annually.The mcr-1 gene was found last year in people and pigs in China, raising alarm.
Frieden said the need for new antibiotics is one of the more urgent health problems, as bugs become more and more resistant to current treatments.Overprescribing of antibiotics by physicians and in hospitals and their extensive use in food livestock have contributed to the crisis. More than half of all hospitalized patients will get an antibiotic at some point during their stay. But studies have shown that 30% to 50% of antibiotics prescribed in hospitals are unnecessary or incorrect, contributing to antibiotic resistance.
In January, dozens of drugmakers and diagnostic companies, including Pfizer, Merck & Co, Johnson & Johnson, and GlaxoSmithKline, signed a declaration calling for new incentives from governments to support investment in development of medicines to fight drug-resistant superbugs.
Source: Reuters
