The superbug that doctors have been dreading just reached the U.S.
The Washington Post
Lena H. Sun, Brady Dennis 2 days ago (Posted here 3:00 P.M. 05/28/20)
For the first time, researchers have found a person in the United States carrying a bacteria resistant to antibiotics of last resort, an alarming development that the top U.S. public health official says could mean "the end of the road" for antibiotics.
The antibiotic-resistant strain was found last month in the urine of a 49-year-old Pennsylvania woman. Department of Defense researchers determined that carried a strain of E. coli resistant to the antibiotic colistin, according to a study published Thursday in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, a publication of the American Society for Microbiology. The authors wrote that the discovery "heralds the emergence of a truly pan-drug resistant bacteria."
Colistin is the antibiotic of last resort for particularly dangerous types of superbugs, including a family of bacteria known as CRE, which health officials have dubbed "nightmare bacteria." In some instances, these superbugs kill up to 50 percent of patients who become infected. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has called CRE among the country's most urgent public health threats.
It's the first time this colistin-resistant strain has been found in a person in the United States. Last November, public health officials around the globe reacted with alarm when Chinese and British researchers reported finding the colistin-resistant strain in pigs, raw pork meat and in a small number of people in China (The Chinese are a never ending source of one World wide gift after another). The deadly strain was later discovered in Europe and elsewhere.
“It basically shows us that the end of the road isn’t very far away for antibiotics -- that we may be in a situation where we have patients in our intensive-care units, or patients getting urinary tract infections for which we do not have antibiotics,” CDC Director Tom Frieden in an interview Thursday.
“I’ve been there for TB patients. I’ve cared for patients for whom there are no drugs left. It is a feeling of such horror and helplessness,” Frieden added. “This is not where we need to be.”
CDC officials are working with Pennsylvania health authorities to interview the patient and family to identify how she may have contracted the bacteria, including reviewing recent hospitalizations and other healthcare exposures. CDC hopes to screen the patient and other contacts to see if others might be carrying the organism. Local and state health departments will also be collecting cultures as part of the investigation.
Scientists and public health officials have long warned that if the resistant bacteria continue to spread, it could seriously limit available treatment options. Routine operations could become deadly. Minor infections could become life-threatening crises. Pneumonia could be more and more difficult to treat.
Already, doctors had been forced to rely on colistin as a last-line defense against antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The drug is hardly ideal. It is more than half a century old and can cause serious damage to a patient’s kidneys. And yet, because doctors have run out of weapons to fight a growing number of infections that evade more modern antibiotics, it has become a critical tool in fighting off some of the most tenacious infections.
Bacteria develop antibiotic resistance in two ways. Many acquire mutations in their own genomes that allow them to withstand antibiotics, although that ability can't be shared with pathogens outside their own family.
Other bacteria rely on a shortcut: they get infected with something called a plasmid, a small piece of DNA, carrying a gene for antibiotic resistance. That makes resistance genes more dangerous because plasmids can make copies of themselves and transfer the genes they carry to other bugs within the same family as well as jump to other families of bacteria, which can then "catch" the resistance directly without having to develop it through evolution.
The colistin-resistant E. coli found in the Pennsylvania woman has this type of resistance gene.
And the Drug companies currently have few or no new antibiotics in their R&D labs. Reasons are of course money for them versus profits. The U.S. has been well known for years as the source of paying for most of the R&D because once it gets a Patent, the Companies make billions and billions to pay for the R&D plus profits that they cannot make in many other Countries. Many drugs we pay an arm and a leg for here are very, very cheap in other places.
As an aside, a big factor in antibiotic resistance: 1 in 3 antibiotics prescribed are unnecessary!
Was interesting to see the list of arrests from 1 May 2016 to 19 May 2016 where our home grown Police have been stopping and/ or arresting some bad guys here at home. Atta Boy to them for sure !!!
See where the Wood County Republican Executive Committee had its "convention" to elect/ choose the 54 delegates to the State Convention. Still ended up with 20 seats not filled. Seems the mugwumps are not able to find folks where they approach and see if someone might be eligible and interested if talked too? Problem is the ideology of some of the current WCREC members can not accept anyone if not ultra conservative enough for them?
I can NOT express enough or with the sincerity I want how much I respect the millions who have, are and will serve in our Military Branches. I don't care if one just served two years at Fort Dix, NJ during the draft years and just peeled potatoes; THEY SERVED albeit unwillingly. One's love of Country is not something easily learned or forgotten, if one has been with people of the same mind set from all over our Country and its Territories. While I admit to having major differences on standards of Elected performance with three (3) of the incumbents, I have tremendous respect for their service.
May each and everyone of you take just a few moments to realize to whom you owe so much for the good things in your lives today. And for those who have not yet been so fortunate, remember it is those same folks who helped to still give each of you the chance for good things to be in your life. I hope one and all enjoy their Holiday. 'nuff said'.
(Paid for by the Candidate- Lawrence J. Wilson for Mayor of Vienna).