Drug-Resistant 'Nightmare Bacteria' Pose Growing Threat

"Nightmare bacteria" with unusual resistance to antibiotics of last resort were found more than 200 times in the United States last year in a first-of-a-kind hunt to see how much of a threat these rare cases are becoming, health officials said this week. From a report: That's more than they had expected to find, and the true number is probably higher because the effort involved only certain labs in each state, officials say. The problem mostly strikes people in hospitals and nursing homes who need IVs and other tubes that can get infected. In many cases, others in close contact with these patients also harbored the superbugs even though they weren't sick -- a risk for further spread. Some of the sick patients had traveled for surgery or other health care to another country where drug-resistant germs are more common, and the superbug infections were discovered after they returned to the U.S.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

oh man, I saw this glowing ember, but was like "pfft, why bother doing anything about it, it's just a tiny little ember".

then my house burnt down

all because I followed your idiotic reasoning.

Re:

[110010001000]

You shouldn't listen to idiots on the Internet. You learned a valuable lesson today.

Re:

[BronsCon]

Well now he's gonna listen to idiots on the internet because some idiot in the internet told him not to right after he learned not to. The logic is there, but I'm not sure I put it together correctly... ;)

Re:

[110010001000]

BronsCon said "Well now he's not gonna listen to idiots on the internet".

-apk

Re:

[BronsCon]

Hah! I was hoping you'd see the humor in my post and it appears that you did.

Re:Terrible

[mark-t]

If there was no observable indication that the number appeared to be increasing at alarming rates, as is the case with the other statistics you cited, then your sarcastically delivered point about panicking about this would be well made.

If you are observing an exponential growth in the number of cases from year to year, however, then the fact that its observed impact so far may not yet have grown to be even anywhere nearly as significant as the impact of other factors is not sufficient cause to be so dismissive.

Re:

[Oswald McWeany]

Spot on, it's not that 200 is a large number when you consider the population of the US, it's that that 200 could potentially grow.

We'd be foolish if 10 years from now this number balloons and we had done nothing to nip it in the bud. 200 cases isn't the end of the world, but it's a sign we need to do something.

Mr. Binary number above pointed out the number of car deaths and Smoking each year... yes, of course those are much larger (for now) but we also spend an awful lot of time and money as a society fi

Re:

[rtb61]

'ER', no, you panic with patient number 1 if the disease is sufficiently dangerous and virulent. Every dangerous contagion kicks off with patient zero, and that is where you want to get to it and prevent it from spreading. Fortunately with less complex life forms, there is only so much DNA to get around, sure it can resist some or anti-biotics but not all, not enough DNA in any particular bacterial cell to resist them all. It just requires a more complex anti-biotic made up of several anti-biotics. Each wit

Re:

[mark-t]

Why would you believe I deny it?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

But yeah, they found 200 instances of bacteria in labs last year. Time to panic.

Panic? No. Cause for concern? Absolutely.

Start having strains of bacteria which you have no means to eliminate, and if people do start getting these on a large scale (and the only reason they showed up in labs was because people actually had them) .. then you have some serious problems:

"These verge on untreatable infections" where the only option may be supportive care - fluids and sometimes machines to maintain life to give

Re:

[dgatwood]

This is terrible. Did you know that 102 people die in car crashes every day in the US? And 1,300 people die from smoking? But yeah, they found 200 instances of bacteria in labs last year. Time to panic.

Oh, no. Someone died in a car crash a few blocks from me, and then the car crash spread to the first responders, which spread to the police officer who eats at the restaurant where I ate a few days ago, and now I might die from that car wreck, too.... No, wait. Those things aren't similar.

Re:

[thegarbz]

I would be more concerned if cars became self aware deceptacons who like facehuggers attacked people in a way that allowed them to multiple and spread onto other people in an exponential manner.

But they aren't. They are just cars, when when you don't move them they don't spread death like ... the plague. That's an interesting analogy. These drug resistant bacteria are like ... the plague.

Now when cars or smoking manage to kill 214million (60% of the population) Americans in 7 years then we can start worryin

Re:

[rickyslashdot]

Woops - day late & mod points short - - -
SERIOUSLY appropriate.
Car crashes, Smoking, Cancer - all types, DEATH AS A DISEASE
ALL of these issues NEED to be dealt with before we panic over a few dozen cases of drug-resistant bacteria.
The bacteria will ALWAYS find a mutation that will manage to survive attacks against it/them - they have done so for many hundreds of millions of years. AND, we are living in a world-wide culture dish that is slamming the bacteria with massive (and often inappropriate) dosage

No they don't

[JoeDuncan]

Stop panicking people.

Phage therapy has been around for @100yrs! The only people in danger are the anti-biotic sellers

Re:

[110010001000]

I prefer leech therapy and blood letting.

Re:

[Guybrush_T]

Except antibiotics are curing people who would die otherwise, so it is concerning if antibiotics no longer work.

It should be kept as a last option against serious diseases (to save us the day a very bad one appears), instead of a way to increase agricultural productivity.

Re:

[JoeDuncan]

Except antibiotics are curing people who would die otherwise, so it is concerning if antibiotics no longer work.

No, they are curing people who could also be cured by phage therapy, so if antibiotics stop working, we can just use phage therapy to get the same results.

Re:

[Guybrush_T]

Oh, I failed to see you were mentioning phage therapy.

Surely an interesting subject, but unless you can predict the future, stating that it can replace antibiotics entirely and for the best is presumptuous. Large scale / long term effects are hard to predict.

Re:

[JoeDuncan]

...unless you can predict the future, stating that it can replace antibiotics entirely and for the best is presumptuous. Large scale / long term effects are hard to predict.

I don't need to predict anything, they've been using phage therapy for exactly this purpose in Georgia going on almost 100yrs now, there's nothing to predict, we know it works

Re:No they don't

[Gilgaron]

You have to take the time to figure out what phage to use. This is much slower than broad spectrum antibiotics. In a case of septicemia it would be the difference between living and dying. Phage therapy is very promising, but not for all the same use cases. For curing a chronic infection it'd be ideal.

Re:

[JoeDuncan]

You have to take the time to figure out what phage to use. This is much slower than broad spectrum antibiotics.

Granted it is slower, but it's debatable whether or not it is significantly so. And the "just slap some antibiotics onto it first" approach is one of the ways we got into this mess to begin with.

In a case of septicemia it would be the difference between living and dying.

Only in backwater countries without public healthcare; in most places preventing septicemia is pretty routine.

Re:

[Gilgaron]

If you've prevented septicemia you don't need to treat it with phages, either. Once it is in progress, phage therapy would not be as useful as antibiotics. Phage therapy would primarily be superior in less acute, more chronic style bacterial infections. Likewise, using them for such infections ought to help us keep new antibiotics effective for longer. Certainly phages could eliminate more 'luxury' use of antibiotics, like treating minor ear infections.

Re:

[Gilgaron]

A phage cocktail might work, but you have to be careful injecting too much foreign protein into a patient, so the devil would be in the details. The latter case you describe is why antibiotics are faster: you can guess and begin treatment before you're even sure what has infected the patient. In any case, for superbugs they usually won't be different from non-antibiotic resistant bacteria as far as the phage is concerned, so it'd be safer to grow a less virulent strain for stock. Then you could ideally

Damn you Crichton!

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't have watched Andromeda Strain last night. And this doesn't help at all...

Agricultural profits

[burtosis]

The reason antibiotics are losing effectiveness is due to agricultural practices and horizontal gene transfer [nih.gov] as well as overuse or inappropriate use such as for viral infections or not finishing treatments. Most damage was done simply to make meat slightly cheaper to produce. It is fed 24/7/365 to animals stuffed cheek to jowl, with the overflow and waste washed into the waterways. This develops resistance faster than most any method short of purposefully engineering biological weapons. For that slim profit margin increase we have traded the modern safety that made dying of a small cut or inconsequential infection unheard of in most of the world. At this rate it's going to resemble ancient times when any surgery at all, even simple stitches, brought a high chance of a fatal infection.

Re:

[burtosis]

Lol, I don't vote either libertarian or republican. Also I buy antibiotic free meat when I can. Gimme the inorganic, hormone stuffed, genetically modified cheapo meats, but the misuse of antibiotics really is disastrous and you can even find it for nearly the same price at major stores.

Re:

[wyHunter]

To what animals is it fed? I'm suspecting poultry.

Re:

[burtosis]

Poultry, beef, pork are the major ones that I'm aware of. I've been buying antibiotics free poultry for some time and it's available for basically the same price at major supermarkets where I live. I don't buy organic, hormone free, or non-gmo which seem to affect price more but have been known to buy anyway if it's also antibiotic free. According to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] it's use on pig growth is the most studied and 90% of all antibiotics go to livestock. Just to clarify, it's not the meat that's harmful, but th

Re:

[wyHunter]

Sure, that makes sense. I agree. I just idly wonder if you live in ranch country, as I do, with a LOT of free range animals (aka "home of the range, where the deer and the antelope play" if they're fed antibiotics as much. I have no idea but want now to find out.

Re:

[thegarbz]

The irony is not lost on me that a lot of the not finishing treatments is done because of fear of "big pharma" controlling your lives.

Why should I keep taking this drug if I'm healthy?
Don't worry, soon you won't have to because it won't help you even when you're sick.

Causes

[VeryFluffyBunny]

The causes of antibiotic resistance are interesting. Including insufficient treatment of wastewater of both human effluent and pharmaceutical manufacturing processes. At least these look like solvable problems that can help, as well as banning antibiotic use in animal feed and tightening pharmaceutical retail practices in some countries.

Governments also need to step up their involvement in pharmaceutical research and development of antibiotics because the pharma companies aren't interested in doing it. You

Re:

[Gilgaron]

Yes, the best use of a new antibiotic is to put it on a shelf and not use it until you really need to, the antithesis of any normal ROI seeking product development. The private sector won't have incentives to develop them without government grants.

Re:

[VeryFluffyBunny]

Yes, it'd make sense for countries to pool their resources and knowledge too. Some umbrella organisation like the WHO could coordinate efforts.

Single Payer health care

[rsilvergun]

the agriculture antibiotics aren't helping, but there's already regulations to try and get that under control by mandating they get off antibiotics.

OTOH, I can't tell you how many poor people I know who stop taking their antibiotics when they feel better. They give you a couple extra days to kill off the infection completely. Around day 3 or 4 you've just created a new strain of antibiotic resistant bacteria that you personally are resistant to. Folks don't stop taking the meds so they can try and save them for the next time or for their kids. They wouldn't do that if they didn't have to worry about coming up with money every time they get sick.

tl;dr: There are broad health consequences for public health when you deny care to people who can't or won't pay.

Re:

[wyHunter]

An awful lot of folks who do this do have access to care and abuse antibiotics as well. AFAIK for western Europe only NORWAY doesn't have too much in the way of antibiotic resistant bacteria - I know UK has a lot and the NHS is free at point of care.

Re:

[cascadingstylesheet]

Folks don't stop taking the meds so they can try and save them for the next time or for their kids. They wouldn't do that if they didn't have to worry about coming up with money every time they get sick.

They stop using them because they feel better, you said it yourself.

Lots of people do that, poor or otherwise. They shouldn't, but they do.

Nope

[rsilvergun]

I've spoken with several of them (used to work in a call center) and they stopped using them to save money. I've had several people suggest this to me as a tactic when I got sick (I knew better and admonished them for it).

When I was poor ever doc told me to finish my meds. When I got some money and started seeing docs in the better neighborhoods that stopped.

Mostly Ho-Hum - HAIs have led the way.

[BoRegardless]

HAIs, hospital acquired infections, have been a highlight of attempts for almost 20 years to identify and stop the worst infections with highest resistance to antibiotics, like MRSA and C-Diff.

The chances are that every time YOU, as an individual, take an antibiotic that you convert one or more bacteria in your gut to an antibiotic resistant type. That is not a real good choice for people who NEED to get rid of a bad bacteria.

Now is the time to find a different avenue to get rid of specific harmful bacteria with new technologies that don't increase the number of antibiotic resistant forms.