Drug-resistant 'superbugs' deemed urgent threats, CDC says

Antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea, a diarrhea-causing superbug and a class of fast-growing killer bacteria dubbed a "nightmare" were classified as urgent public-health threats in the United States on Monday.

According to a new report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), at least 2 million people in the United States develop serious bacterial infections that are resistant to one or more types of antibiotics each year, and at least 23,000 die from the infections.

"For organism after organism, we're seeing this steady increase in resistance rates," Dr Thomas Frieden, director of the CDC, said in a telephone interview. "We don't have new drugs about to come out of the pipeline. If and when we get new drugs, unless we do a better job of protecting them, we'll lose those, also."

Overprescribing of antibiotics is a chief cause of antibiotic resistance, affording pathogens the opportunity to outwit the drugs used to treat them. Only a handful of new antibiotics have been developed and brought to market in the past few decades, and only a few companies are working on drugs to replace them.

In addition to resistant gonorrhea, the others now seen as urgent threats, according to the first-of-its-kind report released on Monday, are C. difficile and the killer class known as carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae, or CRE. Read more >>

UK Chief Medical Officer: Resistance to antibiotics risks health 'catastrophe' to rank with terrorism

Britain's health system could slip back by 200 years unless the "catastrophic threat" of antibiotic resistance is successfully tackled, the Government's Chief Medical Officer warns today.

In her first annual report, Dame Sally Davies says the problem of microbes becoming increasingly resistant to the most powerful drugs should be ranked alongside terrorism and climate change on the list of critical risks to the nation.

The growing ineffectiveness of many antibiotics against infection is being compounded by a "discovery void", as few new compounds are being developed to take their place. Dame Sally calls for a string of actions to tackle the threat, which is likely to include tighter restrictions on how GPs prescribe antibiotics for their patients.

Declaring that in 20 years' time even minor surgery may lead to death through untreatable infection, she warns: "This is a growing problem, and if we don't get it right, we will find ourselves in a health system not dissimilar from the early 19th century." Read more >>

Antibiotic-resistant diseases pose 'apocalyptic' threat, top expert says

Britain's most senior medical adviser has warned MPs that the rise in drug-resistant diseases could trigger a national emergency comparable to a catastrophic terrorist attack, pandemic flu or major coastal flooding.

Dame Sally Davies, the chief medical officer, said the threat from infections that are resistant to frontline antibiotics was so serious that the issue should be added to the government's national risk register of civil emergencies.

She described what she called an "apocalyptic scenario" where people going for simple operations in 20 years' time die of routine infections "because we have run out of antibiotics".

The register was established in 2008 to advise the public and businesses on national emergencies that Britain could face in the next five years. The highest priority risks on the latest register include a deadly flu outbreak, catastrophic terrorist attacks, and major flooding on the scale of 1953, the last occasion on which a national emergency was declared in the UK.

Speaking to MPs on the Commons science and technology committee, Davies said she would ask the Cabinet Office to add antibiotic resistance to the national risk register in the light of an annual report on infectious disease she will publish in March. Read more >>

Majority of U.S. pork supply tainted with deadly drugs, bacteria

Steamed Rice Rolls with Pork Loaf and Sour Pork - Thien An, Footscray AUD8.50 (Photo credit: avlxyz)

(NaturalNews) The next time you reach for the bacon, ham, pork chops or pork steaks, you may want to rethink your dining choice: A majority of samples of "the other white meat" that were obtained in a recent study contained bacteria, potentially deadly drugs or a combination of both.

According to Consumer Reports, samples of U.S. pork chops and ground pork were found to contain substantial amounts of harmful, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, along with low levels of a type of growth hormone used on pigs.

"Our analysis of pork-chop and ground-pork samples from around the U.S. found that yersinia enterocolitica, a bacterium that can cause fever, diarrhea, and abdominal pain, was widespread. Some samples harbored other potentially harmful bacteria, including salmonella," the magazine said in a recent report.

No drugs should be used on healthy animals to promote growth

Of 198 samples, some of the bacteria found by the CR investigation were resistant to antibiotics that are commonly used to treat humans. That's likely due to the "frequent use of low-dose antibiotics in pork farming" which "may be accelerating the growth of drug-resistant 'superbugs' that threaten human health," said the magazine. Read more >>

MRSA Detected at Four U.S. Wastewater Treatment Plants

M.R.S.A. Staphylococcus aureus on Brilliance MRSA Chromogenic Agar (Photo credit: Nathan Reading)

Source
Background: The incidence of community-acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA) infections is increasing in the United States, and it is possible that municipal waste­water could be a reservoir of this micro­organism. To date, no U.S. studies have evaluated the occurrence of MRSA in waste­water.


Objective: We examined the occurrence of MRSA and methicillin-susceptible S. aureus (MSSA) at U.S. waste­water treatment plants.


Methods: We collected waste­water samples from two Mid-Atlantic and two Midwest waste­water treatment plants between October 2009 and October 2010. Samples were analyzed for MRSA and MSSA using membrane filtration. Isolates were confirmed using biochemical tests and PCR (polymerase chain reaction). Antimicrobial susceptibility testing was performed by Sensititre® micro­broth dilution. Staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec) typing, Panton-Valentine leucocidin (PVL) screening, and pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) were performed to further characterize the strains. Data were analyzed by two-sample proportion tests and analysis of variance.


Results: We detected MRSA (n = 240) and MSSA (n = 119) in 22 of 44 (50%) and 24 of 44 (55%) waste­water samples, respectively. The odds of samples being MRSA-positive decreased as treatment progressed: 10 of 12 (83%) influent samples were MRSA-positive, while only one of 12 (8%) effluent samples was MRSA-positive. Ninety-three percent and 29% of unique MRSA and MSSA isolates, respectively, were multi­drug resistant. SCCmec types II and IV, the pvl gene, and USA types 100, 300, and 700 (PFGE strain types commonly found in the United States) were identified among the MRSA isolates.


Conclusions: Our findings raise potential public health concerns for waste­water treatment plant workers and individuals exposed to reclaimed waste­water. Because of increasing use of reclaimed waste­water, further study is needed to evaluate the risk of exposure to antibiotic-resistant bacteria in treated waste­water.