Mutant Superbug Has Been Discovered In The U.S.

[ScienceRocks]

Mutant Superbug Has Been Discovered In The U.S.
The infection resists the treatment of last resort, meaning “the medicine cabinet is empty for some patients,” the CDC director said.
Mutant Superbug Has Been Discovered In The U.S.
05/27/2016 12:36 am ET

A mutant strain of E. coli, resistant to even the toughest antibiotics, has been found in the United States, federal health officials said Thursday.

The bacteria, discovered last month in a 49-year-old Pennsylvania woman with a urinary tract infection, contains a gene known as mcr-1, making it resistant even to colistin, a decades-old antibiotic that has increasingly been used as a treatment of last resort against dangerous superbugs.

If we were a nation that cared about the health of our people we'd spend money on developing the means to beat such a bug. Of course, building schools for little middle eastern kids and handing over military trucks, tanks and other shit is more important.

 

[Grandma]

We aren't building schools in the Middle East, either.

Sure there are subcontractors there with their dirty little lowball contracts, but it's about them getting free money from the government, not about helping poor war ophans.

There's no money in helping the poor or fighting disease.

 

[IsaacNewton]

This has been coming for a decade, the entire pharmaceutical industry has known about this as has the government.

I've never seen any of those entities go on tv and say 'this is the new Manhattan Project, we have to act now'.

 

[ScienceRocks]

This has been coming for a decade, the entire pharmaceutical industry has known about this as has the government.

I've never seen any of those entities go on tv and say 'this is the new Manhattan Project, we have to act now'.

Well, no one invest in making sure we can stay ahead of such changes. One day that will of course catch up to us to bite us in the ass.

 

[numan]

'
Back to the future: Antibody-based strategies for the treatment of infectious diseases - Springer


Abstract
Before antibiotics, sera from immune animals and humans were used to treat a variety of infectious diseases, often with successful results. After the discovery of antimicrobial agents, serum therapy for bacterial infections was rapidly forsaken. In the last two decades, problems with treatment of newly emerged, reemerged, or persistent infectious diseases necessitated researchers to develop new and/or improved antibody-based therapeutic approaches. This article reviews some information on the use of antibodies for the treatment of infectious diseases, with special reference to the most seminal discoveries and current advances as well as available treatment approaches in this field.
.

 

[waltky]

Mutation is the name of the game...

How 'Superbugs' Become Super
May 27, 2016 - News of antibiotic-resistant 'superbug' found in US makes waves, but how did we get here? How do bacteria develop resistance to entire arsenals of antibiotics?

The news of the superbug that came out this week made waves because until last month it has never been found in the United States. Dr. Tom Frieden, the head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said this new bug is resistant to "every antibiotic, including the last one we have, colistin, an old antibiotic. It was the only one left for what I’ve called 'nightmare bacteria.' " Colistin was discovered in the 1950s but fell out of favor because it's fairly toxic to the human body. To be specific it damages the human liver and if overprescribed can be deadly in and of itself.

Worked against resistant strains

But until recently it was working against bacteria that had evolved a strong resistance to other kinds of antibiotics. Until April that is, when a Pennsylvania woman tested positive for a form of E. coli called CRE (carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae) that comes equipped with a gene called mcr-1 that protects it from colilstin. How did this happen? Think of it in terms of the quote by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: "That which does not kill us makes us stronger." Well that's what's happening here. Antibiotics are prescribed to fight and kill invading bacteria in a few different ways. They can destroy a bacteria's cell wall, making it basically self-destruct.

Role in bacteria

Antibiotics can stop the bacteria from repairing itself or they can keep it from reproducing so new bacteria can't grow and spread an infection. But because antibiotics are never completely effective, after a course of antibiotics there might be a few resistant bacteria still around. In some cases, its just a case of evolution, and a lucky mutation allows a bacteria to survive antibiotics.

E. coli bacteria​

These mutation are made more possible because, in some cases, doctor's aren't prescribing the best antibiotics to fight a particular bacteria, Herman Goossens, a professor of medical microbiology at the University of Antwerp Belgium, told VOA. "We don’t have good diagnostic tests to detect the bacteria. So, doctors just give antibiotics, a cocktail if they are not sure what it is, and that’s all wrong. This has to change. This practice has to change," Goossens said. That practice contributes to the possibility some bacteria will ultimately survive a regimen of antibiotics, and as they grow and spread, any new bacteria carry that resistance, making that particular antibiotic ineffective.

Life finds a way

See also:

First Drug-resistant Bacteria Case in US Is Not First in World
May 27, 2016 - Untreatable bacterial infections often are caused by too-frequent use of antibiotics; one experts says prescribing practices should be reviewed

A nightmare scenario long feared by U.S. public health officials has now occurred — and good intentions may have contributed to it. Infectious-disease specialists are scrambling to identify the source of a bacterial infection in a Pennsylvania woman that does not respond to an antibiotic of last resort. Thomas Frieden, head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the development meant that "the medicine cabinet is empty for some patients. It is the end of the road for antibiotics unless we act urgently." The Pennsylvania woman, 49, sought treatment last month at a military clinic for a urinary tract infection, and she was found to be harboring a strain of the bacterium E. coli that didn't respond to colistin, an antibiotic considered a drug of last resort against treatment-resistant “superbugs.”

This 2006 colorized scanning electron micrograph image made available by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows the O157:H7 strain of the E. coli bacteria.​

Colistin is often the only drug that can treat a family of pathogens known as CRE, which officials call “nightmare bacteria” because they can kill up to 50 percent of people they infect. The news was reported Thursday in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology. The E. coli strain in the Pennsylvania woman carried the dreaded resistance gene mcr-1, which circulates with ease among disease-causing microbes, also making them drug-resistant. Microbes can mutate into forms that are less sensitive to highly specific antibiotics, avoiding destruction, if the drugs designed to kill them are misprescribed or taken incorrectly.

Possible sources

As U.S. officials try to hunt down the source of the woman’s drug-resistant infection, an expert in antibiotic resistance said it could have originated from a number of places. Hermann Goossens, a professor of medical microbiology at the University of Antwerp in Belgium, said raw pork and pork products have been found to harbor bacteria with the mcr-1 mutation, so eating them can cause infection. Although the woman reportedly didn’t travel, people in Southeast Asia and China have been found to be infected with the colistin-resistant gene. Goossens also said antibiotic prescribing practices, his specialty, should be reviewed. He said doctors who are trying to be helpful often prescribe antibiotics incorrectly or unnecessarily, encouraging bacterial mutations. “We don’t have good diagnostic tests to detect the bacteria," he said, "so doctors just give antibiotics — a cocktail, if they are not sure what it is — and that’s all wrong. This has to change.”

Goossens said the case of the Pennsylvania woman, while serious, should not be cause for too much public alarm — at least not yet. “It shouldn’t worry the public to such an extent that this is the end of, let’s say, the antibiotic era, that people are going to die now of infections, that they are going to die massively," he said. "This is a very rare event. It’s extremely rare; it’s not likely to spread very quickly and it is something that we see in other countries.” Goossens said bacteria do not mutate rapidly and people can recover from infections without the use of antibiotics. He said that could be the case with the Pennsylvania woman, and U.S. officials said her infection was still treatable with other antibiotics. Whether or not the nation's first colistin-resistant infection signals the end of the antibiotic era, doctors and public health officials are still concerned that the most powerful antibiotic in the drug arsenal may no longer be up to the challenge of superbugs.

First Drug-resistant Bacteria Case in US Is Not First in World

 

[Lutroo]

Mutant Superbug Has Been Discovered In The U.S.
The infection resists the treatment of last resort, meaning “the medicine cabinet is empty for some patients,” the CDC director said.
Mutant Superbug Has Been Discovered In The U.S.
05/27/2016 12:36 am ET

A mutant strain of E. coli, resistant to even the toughest antibiotics, has been found in the United States, federal health officials said Thursday.

The bacteria, discovered last month in a 49-year-old Pennsylvania woman with a urinary tract infection, contains a gene known as mcr-1, making it resistant even to colistin, a decades-old antibiotic that has increasingly been used as a treatment of last resort against dangerous superbugs.

If we were a nation that cared about the health of our people we'd spend money on developing the means to beat such a bug. Of course, building schools for little middle eastern kids and handing over military trucks, tanks and other shit is more important.

This is how the world ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper.

 

[xband]

Mutant superbugs will keep evolving and will eventually defeat all antibiotics. All multicellular organisms are doomed to the Darwinian Effect. The strong survive and the weak perish.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Mutant superbugs will keep evolving and will eventually defeat all antibiotics. All multicellular organisms are doomed to the Darwinian Effect. The strong survive and the weak perish.

IF we dont fight back that will be true.