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Antibiotic-resistant superbug arrives in the US

<p>Researchers have long warned us that bacteria in our bodies is growing more and more resistant to antibiotics. But a new report indicates the end of antibiotics could be closer than we thought.&nbsp;</p><p>The&nbsp;<a href="http://aac.asm.org/content/early/2016/05/25/AAC.01103-16.full.pdf+html" target="_blank">study, released Thursday, discusses a case</a>&nbsp;involving a 49-year-old Pennsylvania woman. Last month she tested positive for a strain of E. coli that&#39;s resistant to the &quot;last resort&quot; of antibiotics a drug called colistin.</p><p>She&#39;s the first person in the U.S. to develop a type of bacteria that doesn&#39;t respond to any known antibiotic.</p><p>Bacteria that&#39;s&nbsp;<a href="http://www.newsy.com/videos/the-last-resort-antibiotic-just-lost-its-fail-safe-status/" target="_blank">resistant to colistin has been identified elsewhere</a>; health officials across the globe started freaking out a few months ago when a strain was identified in pigs, raw pork meat and even people in China.&nbsp;</p><p>&quot;What they&#39;ve found this time is these bacteria are able to take that information, that gene, that makes them resistant, package it into an envelope called a plasmid and then send it to another bacteria that has never seen the antibiotic,&quot;&nbsp;<a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/antibiotic-resistance-colistin-1.3325942" target="_blank">Dr. Peter Lin told CBC.</a></p><p>Doctors warned the spread was inevitable. After learning of the first case in the U.S., the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/05/26/the-superbug-that-doctors-have-been-dreading-just-reached-the-u-s/?tid=pm_national_pop_b" target="_blank">told The Washington Post</a>, &quot;It basically shows us that the end of the road isn&#39;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.&quot;</p><p>A review published earlier this month lends credit to that prediction researchers estimate antibiotic-resistant infections, or &quot;superbugs,&quot;&nbsp;<a href="http://www.newsy.com/videos/superbugs-could-kill-10-million-people-a-year-by-2050/" target="_blank">could kill 10 million</a>&nbsp;people each year by 2050.</p><p>The CDC says it&#39;s working with health officials in Pennsylvania to determine how the patient may have contracted the bacteria.</p><p><i>This video includes clips from the&nbsp;</i><i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpKZvnJwicA" target="_blank">Centers for Disease Control and Prevention</a></i><i>.&nbsp;</i></p>
Posted at 10:01 AM, May 27, 2016
and last updated 2016-05-27 10:01:51-04

Federal health officials are sounding an alarm today, revealing that researchers may have uncovered a strain of bacteria so resistant to treatment that some of the toughest antibiotics cannot kill it.

Bacteria found in a Pennsylvania woman suffering from a urinary tract infection was found to be resistant to the antibiotic called colistin, according to a case report released today in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.

The strain of bacteria was isolated from her urine. Colistin is considered a last-resort antibiotic for bacteria that does not respond to medication. It is rarely used because of its harsh side effects.

“The more we look at drug resistance, the more concerned we are,” said Dr. Tom Frieden, the head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "It basically shows us that the end of the road isn't very far away for antibiotics."

CDC officials did clarify however that in this woman's case, the bacteria strain was susceptible to a more commonly used antibiotic, making the use of colistin for treatment unnecessary.

"The strain is not resistant to everything. It carries the plasmid [genetic material] for colistin resistance," said Dr. Beth Bell, director of the CDC's National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases and the person overseeing antibiotic resistance. "The fear is that this could spread to other bacteria and create the bacterium that would be resistant to everything."

For years, officials have been concerned that antibiotic-resistant bacteria could develop and not be affected by a known antibiotic. There are only a few classes of antibiotics to treat bacterial infections to begin with, experts say.

The overuse of antibiotics by people and in animals has bred superbugs, resistant strains of bacteria. A lack of good infection control has helped them spread in hospitals. According to the CDC, there were 2 million antibiotic resistant infections in 2013.

"The medicine cabinet is empty for some patients," Frieden said. "It is the end of the road for antibiotics unless we act urgently."

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