Understanding CRE, the 'nightmare' superbug that contributed to 2 deaths in L.A.

[Menerva Lindsen]

The term "nightmare bacteria" does not bode well for anyone who may get infected.
That's what CDC epidemiologists call carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae, or CRE, which kill up to half the patients who contract them.
The family of superbugs made headlines two years ago when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned it was spreading.
Now, they're back in the news after seven patients at a Los Angeles hospital caught CRE after routine endoscopic treatments for bile ducts, gall bladder or pancreas.
Two of them have died, the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center said Wednesday. CRE was a contributing factor in the deaths, but the exact cause of the deaths wasn't immediately disclosed, a hospital spokeswoman said. The medical center is contacting 179 others who had endoscopic procedures between October and January. It's offering them home tests to screen for the bacteria.

Understanding CRE the nightmare superbug that contributed to 2 deaths in L.A. - CNN.com
What kind of divine punishment will we face in future? How easy may we die in the USA? We are dieing because of guns, drugs, bad food and ecology. Moreover new bacterias are appearing to destroy our nation!!!

 

[waltky]

Antibiotic ignorance is fueling the rise of drug-resistant superbugs...

WHO: Misunderstanding of Antibiotics Fuels Superbug Threat
November 16, 2015 — People across the world are alarmingly confused about the role of antibiotics and the right way to take them, and this ignorance is fueling the rise of drug-resistant superbugs, the World Health Organization said on Monday.

"The rise of antibiotic resistance is a global health crisis," WHO Director-General Margaret Chan told reporters in a tele-briefing from the organization's Geneva headquarters. She said the problem was "reaching dangerously high levels" in all parts of the world and could lead to "the end of modern medicine as we know it." Antibiotic resistance happens when bacteria mutate and adapt to become invulnerable to the antibiotics used to treat the infections they cause. Over-use and misuse of antibiotics exacerbates the development of drug-resistant bacteria, often called superbugs.

А microbiologist reads a panel to check on a bacterium's resistance to an antibiotic in а lab at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention​

Baffling survey results

Publishing the results of a survey of public awareness, the United Nations health agency said 64 percent of those asked believed wrongly that penicillin-based drugs and other antibiotics can treat colds and flu, despite the fact such medicines have no impact on viruses. Around a third of people surveyed also wrongly believed they should stop taking antibiotics when they feel better, rather than completing the prescribed treatment course, the WHO said. "The findings... point to the urgent need to improve understanding around antibiotic resistance," said Keiji Fukuda, the WHO's special representative for antimicrobial resistance. "One of the biggest health challenges of the 21st century will require global behavior change by individuals and societies." Superbug infections, including multi-drug-resistant typhoid, tuberculosis and gonorrhoea, already kill hundreds of thousands of people a year, and for now the trend is still growing.

‘Race against the pathogens’

Fukuda described it as a "race against the pathogens", adding that if everyone steps into action now, it will probably take five to 10 years to turn the situation around. The WHO surveyed 10,000 people across 12 countries - Barbados, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Russia, Serbia, South Africa, Sudan and Vietnam - and found many worrying misconceptions. Three-quarters of respondents think antibiotic resistance means the body is resistant to the drugs, for example, whereas in fact it is the bacteria themselves that become resistant to antibiotics, and their spread causes hard-to-treat infections.

Some 66 percent believe individuals are not at risk of a drug-resistant infection if they personally take their antibiotics as prescribed. And nearly half of those surveyed think drug resistance is only a problem in people who take antibiotics often. In fact, anyone, anywhere, of any age, can get a superbug infection. Chan urged doctors to dissuade patients from demanding antibiotics for infections they can't treat, and persuade them to use the drugs strictly according to their prescription. "Doctors need to treat antibiotics as a precious commodity," she said.

WHO: Misunderstanding of Antibiotics Fuels Superbug Threat

 

[waltky]

China finds new superbug gene...

New ‘superbug’ gene found in humans, pigs in China
Fri, Nov 20, 2015 - A new gene that makes bacteria highly resistant to a last-resort class of antibiotics has been found in people and pigs in China — including in samples of bacteria with epidemic potential, researchers said on Wednesday.

The discovery was described as “alarming” by scientists, who called for urgent restrictions on the use of polymyxins — a class of antibiotics that includes the drug colistin and is widely used in livestock farming. “All use of polymyxins must be minimized as soon as possible and all unnecessary use stopped,” said Laura Piddock, a professor of microbiology at Britain’s Birmingham University who was asked to comment on the finding. Researchers led by Hua Liu from the South China Agricultural University, who published their work in the Lancet Infectious Diseases journal, found the gene, called mcr-1, on plasmids — mobile DNA that can be easily copied and transferred between different bacteria. This suggests “an alarming potential” for it to spread and diversify between bacterial populations, they said.

The team already has evidence of the gene being transferred between common bacteria such as E coli, which causes urinary tract and many other types of infection, and Klesbsiella pneumoniae, which causes pneumonia and other infections. This suggests “the progression from extensive drug resistance to pandrug resistance is inevitable,” they said. “[And] although currently confined to China, mcr-1 is likely to emulate other resistance genes ... and spread worldwide.” The discovery of the spreading mcr-1 resistance gene echoes news from 2010 of another so-called “superbug” gene, NDM-1, which emerged in India and rapidly spread around the world. Piddock and others said global surveillance for mcr-1 resistance is now essential to try to prevent the spread of polymyxin-resistant bacteria. China is one of the world’s largest users and producers of colistin for agriculture and veterinary use.

Worldwide demand for the antibiotic in agriculture is expected to reach almost 12,000 tonnes per year by the end of this year, rising to 16,500 tonnes by 2021, according to a report by the QYResearch Medical Research Centre released earlier this year. In Europe, 80 percent of polymixin sales — mainly colistin — are in Spain, Germany and Italy, according to the European Medicines Agency’s Surveillance of Veterinary Antimicrobial Consumption (ESVAC) report. For the China study, researchers collected bacteria samples from pigs at slaughter across four provinces, and from pork and chicken sold in 30 open markets and 27 supermarkets in Guangzhou between 2011 and last year. They also analyzed bacteria from patients with infections at two hospitals in Guangdong and Zhejiang.

They found a high prevalence of the mcr-1 gene in E coli samples from animals and raw meat. Worryingly, the proportion of positive samples increased from year to year, they said, and mcr-1 was also found in 16 E coli and Klesbsiella pneumoniae samples from 1,322 hospitalized patients. David Paterson and Patrick Harris from Australia’s University of Queensland, writing a commentary in the same journal, said the links between agricultural use of colistin, colistin resistance in slaughtered animals, colistin resistance in food, and colistin resistance in humans were now complete.

New ‘superbug’ gene found in humans, pigs in China - Taipei Times

 

[waltky]

Granny says, "Dat's right - it's dat end time plague - we all gonna die...

Superbug infections found in China
Sun, Jan 29, 2017 - LAST RESORT: About 1 percent of a study of 17,000 samples from people infected with common bacteria were found to be resistant to colistin, the last option in antibiotics

New research suggests a worrying number of people in China may be infected with bacteria resistant to an antibiotic used as a last resort. Researchers examined more than 17,000 samples from patients with infections of common bacteria found in the gut, in two hospitals in China’s Zhejiang and Guangdong provinces, over eight years. About 1 percent of those samples were resistant to colistin, often considered the last option in antibiotics. The study, published on Friday in The Lancet journal, is one of the first to document the extent of drug-resistant infections in more than one Chinese province. For decades, China has used colistin in its agriculture industry to speed animals’ growth, but the drug was not used in people.

Scientists say the latest work is further evidence that overuse in animals can spread to people. Chinese officials earlier this year approved colistin for use in hospitals, raising fears that it could worsen the resistance problem. “It will be very important to ration its use so that it’s only used when absolutely nothing else will work,” said Mark Enright, a professor of medical microbiology at Manchester Metropolitan University, who was not part of the research. Health officials have long worried that colistin-resistant bacteria may spread more widely, setting the stage for superbug infections that would theoretically be impervious to medications. Only a small number of such cases worldwide have been detected, including in the US.

A colorized scanning electron micrograph image made available by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows the O157:H7 strain of E coli bacteria​

Rising concerns over drug-resistant germs have prompted the UN to encourage countries to cut back on antibiotic use and develop new medicines. People infected with these resistant strains can usually be treated with current antibiotics, but doctors said that as these bacteria — which are already untreatable with last-resort drugs — acquire resistance to current drugs, the infections may become impossible to treat. Experts also noted a surprise: the apparent ease with which the resistant gene spread between bacteria, including different species of bugs. “It now looks like there’s potential for the resistance gene to move around and spread between different species of bacteria,” said Nigel Brown, a spokesman for Britain’s Microbiology Society, adding that it could lead to a jump in infections.

In a separate study also published in The Lancet, another group of Chinese researchers analyzed samples from patients with blood infections at 28 hospitals. About 1 percent had the colistin-resistant gene — a much higher figure than would be expected in developed countries. Colistin’s use in hospitals should be restricted to avoid problems, said Yu Yunsong, one of the study’s authors. “This is a warning shot about the possible scenario where we don’t have very much left in the armory to treat [bacterial] infections,” Brown said. “I don’t think we are very close to that happening, but it is a remote possibility if we aren’t careful about how we use our antibiotics.”

Superbug infections found in China - Taipei Times