

Proliferation of diseases resistant to antibiotics poses deadly healthcare challenge

Wired: “…Last August, a woman in her 70s checked into a hospital in Reno, Nevada with a bacterial infection in her hip. The bug belonged to a class of particularly tenacious microbes known as carpabenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae, or CREs. Except in addition to carpabenem, this bug was also resistant to tetracycline, and colistin, and every single other antimicrobial on the market, all 26 of them. A few weeks later she developed septic shock and died. For public health officials like Patel, that case marks the end of an era, and the beginning of a new one. Now, the question is: How fast is that kind of pan-resistance going to spread? “When does it get to the point where it’s more common to have an infection that can’t be treated with antibiotics than one that can?” says [Jean Patel, who leads the CDC’s Antibiotic Strategy & Coordination Unit]. “That’s going to be a very hard thing to predict.”…”

Sorry, comments are closed for this post.