Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Moving From South Asia to U.S.
By Linda on Sep 14, 2010 in Infections | comments(0)
Full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/12/world/asia/12bug.html?ref=world
Excerpt:
A dangerous new mutation that makes some bacteria resistant to almost all antibiotics has become increasingly common in India and Pakistan and is being found in patients in Britain and the United States who got medical care in those countries, according to new studies.
Experts in antibiotic resistance called the gene mutation, named NDM-1, “worrying” and “ominous,” and they said they feared it would spread globally.
But they also put it in perspective: there are numerous strains of antibiotic-resistant germs, and although they have killed many patients in hospitals and nursing homes, none have yet lived up to the “superbug” and “flesh-eating bacteria” hyperbole that greets the discovery of each new one.
“They’re all bad,” said Dr. Martin J. Blaser, chairman of medicine at New York UniversityLangone Medical Center. “Is NDM-1 more worrisome than MRSA? It’s too early to judge.”
(MRSA, or methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, is a hard-to-treat bacterium that used to cause problems only in hospitals but is now found in gyms, prisons and nurseries, and is occasionally picked up by healthy people through cuts and scrapes.)
