New drug – resistant superbugs spreading

Hamilton Spectator September 14, 2010 P.A7

BOSTON - An infectious-disease nightmare is unfolding: A new gene that can turn many types of bacteria into superbugs resistant to nearly all antibiotics has sickened people in three states, has popped up in Canada and worldwide, health officials reported yesterday.

The U.S. cases and two others in Canada all involve people who had recently received medical care in India, where the problem is wide spread. A British medical journal revealed the risk last month in an article describing dozens of cases in Britain in people who had gone to India for medical procedures. How many deaths the gene may have caused is unknown.

Scientists have long feared this – a very adaptable gene that hitches onto many types of common germs and confers broad drug resistance. “It’s a great concern,” because drug resistance has been rising and few new antibiotics are in development, said Dr. M. Lindsay Grayson, director of infectious diseases at the University of Melbourne in Australia. “It’s just a matter of time” until the gene spreads more widely person-to-person.

Grayson heads an American Society for Microbiology conference in Boston, which was buzzing with reports of the gene, called NDM-1 and named for New Delhi.

The U.S. cases occurred in 2010 in people from California, Massachusetts and Illinois. Three types of bacteria were involved, and three different mechanisms let the gene become part of them.

What can people do? Don’t add to the drug resistance problem, experts say. Don’t pressure your doctors for antibiotics if they say they aren’t needed, use the ones you are given properly, and try to avoid infections by washing your hands.

The Associated Press