Tag: bacteria
U.S. Sees First Case Of Bacteria Resistant To All Antibiotics

U.S. Sees First Case Of Bacteria Resistant To All Antibiotics

By Ransdell Pierson and Bill Berkrot

U.S. health officials on Thursday reported the first case in the country of a patient with an infection resistant to all known antibiotics, and expressed grave concern that the superbug could pose serious danger for routine infections if it spreads.

“We risk being in a post-antibiotic world,” said Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, referring to the urinary tract infection of a 49-year-old Pennsylvania woman who had not travelled within the prior five months.

Frieden, speaking at a National Press Club luncheon in Washington, D.C., said the infection was not controlled even by colistin, an antibiotic that is reserved for use against “nightmare bacteria.”

The infection was reported Thursday 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. Authors of the study could not immediately be reached for comment.

The study said continued surveillance to determine the true frequency of the gene in the United States is critical.

“It is dangerous and we would assume it can be spread quickly, even in a hospital environment if it is not well contained,” said Dr. Gail Cassell, a microbiologist and senior lecturer at Harvard Medical School.

But she 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.

 

“MEDICINE CABINET IS EMPTY FOR SOME”

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.

The potential for the superbug to spread from animals to people is a major concern, Cassell said.

For now, Cassell said people can best protect themselves from it and from other bacteria resistant to antibiotics by thoroughly washing their hands, washing fruits and vegetables thoroughly and preparing foods appropriately.

Experts have warned since the 1990s that especially bad superbugs could be on the horizon, but few drugmakers have attempted to develop drugs against them.

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. “The more we look at drug resistance, the more concerned we are,” Frieden added. “The medicine cabinet is empty for some patients. It is the end of the road for antibiotics unless we act urgently.”

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 percent to 50 percent of antibiotics prescribed in hospitals are unnecessary or incorrect, contributing to antibiotic resistance.

Many drugmakers have been reluctant to spend the money needed to develop new antibiotics, preferring to use their resources on medicines for cancer and rare diseases that command very high prices and lead to much larger profits.

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.

 

Reporting by Ransdell Pierson; Additional reporting by Bill Berkrot; Editing by Bernard Orr

Photo: Colonies of E. coli bacteria grown on a Hektoen enteric (HE) agar plate are seen in a microscopic image courtesy of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC).  CDC/Handout via REUTERS  

Yes, Leprosy Is Still A Thing

Yes, Leprosy Is Still A Thing

Believe it or not, Leprosy, a disease that’s been documented since Biblical times, still exists in the United States today. But in case you feel an Ebola-like freak out coming on, take a deep breath – it’s really, really, really rare.  And nobody gets sent off to a leper colony anymore either, these days Leprosy (aka Hansen’s disease) gets successfully treated and cured with antibiotics.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) some 100 new cases each year are reported here.  Compare those stats with the worldwide ones, there were 250,000 cases around the world in 2008.

Caused by two bacteria Mycobacterium leprae and Mycobacterium lepromatosis, the exact method of transmission is not really known, but it is believe to be spread via nasal droplets. In addition, studies have shown it can be spread to humans who consume or handle armadillos, which is why most infections in the U.S. occur in Texas and Louisiana, the armadillo’s stopping grounds. But don’t blame the armadillo, they’re just convenient vectors; they’re native to north and south America so it’s likely they caught it from European explorers and settlers as far back as the 15th century. Prior to that Leprosy was unknown in the New World.

About 20 – 40 cases a year are diagnosed in those born in the United States, but most of the U.S. cases are in people born abroad who became infected before they came here. Leprosy rates are high in the developing world, but even there they on the decline.

Photo: Wikipedia

Eggs: To Refrigerate Or Not

Eggs: To Refrigerate Or Not

Is it dangerous to store eggs outside the refrigerator?  The answer depends on where you buy your eggs, or more accurately where you live.

In the U.S., eggs are generally sold from a refrigerated section of the supermarket and stored that way at home. If we buy eggs at a farm stand or farmer’s market they may be at room temperature, but only until we get them home.  But in most other places around the world they’re sold and stored at room temperature.

Is one healthier or better than the other?  According to NPR’s The Salt, both are correct and safe, but it depends on whether or not the eggs are washed after coming out of the hen.

“We Americans, along with the Japanese, Australians and Scandinavians, tend to be squeamish about our chicken eggs, so we bathe them and then have to refrigerate them. But (in the U.S.) we’re oddballs. Most other countries don’t mind letting unwashed eggs sit next to bread or onions.”

When U.S. hens lay eggs they’re grabbed immediately and put through a wash of soap and hot water. Now that removes all manner of gunk and bacteria, but it also removes a super thin film that coats each egg and protects it from that gunk, while allowing water and oxygen to get inside.

Proper washing gets rid of bacteria such as salmonella enteritidis and so is required in the U.S., but in many other countries laying hens are vaccinated against it and the eggs don’t need to be washed to protect the consumer.

Both ways achieve the same results.

Oh and by the way, brown and white eggs are exactly the same.

Photo: Pixabay.com

Bacteria In Your Gut May Hold The Key To Disease

Bacteria In Your Gut May Hold The Key To Disease

Don’t freak out, but all of us contain millions of bacteria both on the inside and the outside. And scientists tell us that that’s a good thing, especially the bacteria in our innards, you know our guts. The health-trend word for all the bacteria, viruses, fungi, and other stuff hanging out in our bodies is microbiome, and for most us it’s what’s keeping us healthy.  But when that microbiome starts to break down we can become sick, sometimes deathly so.

WebMD tells us that “ongoing research reveals that people with certain diseases often have a very different mix of bacteria in their intestines compared to healthier people. Researchers are working to define the makeup of gut bacteria in a healthy person vs. the gut bacteria that can point to higher risk or presence of certain diseases.”

“Some scientists believe analysis of your microbiome will one day be as common as routine blood tests. Doctors could discuss the results with you and the long-term management of your gut bacteria. Current research could one day lead to customized probiotics that would offset whatever disease-promoting microbiome you might harbor.”

Photo: Igbiosystems.com