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'Superbug' Resistant To 26 Antibiotics Kills A Patient In Nevada (upi.com)

An anonymous reader quotes UPI: A Nevada woman in her 70s who'd recently returned from India died in September from a "superbug" infection that resisted all antibiotics, according to a report released Friday... The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention "basically reported that there was nothing in our medicine cabinet to treat this lady," report co-author Dr. Randall Todd told the Reno Gazette-Journal. He's director of epidemiology and public health preparedness for the Washoe County Health District, in Reno... CDC testing subsequently revealed the germ was New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase -- a highly resistant form of CRE typically found outside the United States.

8 of 296 comments (clear)

  1. Re:oops by Baloroth · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Probably no one. With a few notable exceptions (bacterial meningitis, TB) most bacterial infections aren't very contagious. You mainly pick them up if you're exposed to a large source of them in the environment (drinking or swimming in contaminated water, poorly cleaned kitchens, cuts, that kind of thing) or if you have an already weakened immune system.

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    "None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
  2. Indiscriminate antibiotic use in farm animals... by mspohr · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Industrial meat farmers in the US (and other countries) use literally tons of antibiotics to improve "yields". This leads to resistant strains of bacteria which are passed to humans. Use in chickens and pigs is particularly problematic because of the large amount of antibiotics and the widespread distribution. Most chicken you buy in the store is contaminated with drug resistant bacteria.
    Just say no to antibiotic treated animals.

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  3. Re:Scientists and doctors.. by smooth+wombat · · Score: 2, Interesting

    One good thing about Trump, he's far more likely to decide big pharma needs to be beaten with a stick and forced to make new antibiotics

    Trump is of the opinion that vaccines are involved with autism. I don't think he's going to be doing too much to "big pharma".

    Which is odd since he is a known germaphobe. One would think he of all people would be interested in both vaccines and new antibiotics.

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    We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
  4. Harvard Medical by ArhcAngel · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Earlier this year Harvard Medical School posted this video showing a bacteria mutating over the course of 11 days until it is resistant to the anti-bacterial they used. 11 days!

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    "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
    1. Re:Harvard Medical by Cyberax · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Thankfully, it's not as scary as it seems - resistance evolves easily but it carries heavy metabolic cost for bacteria. So resistant bacteria are outcompeted by non-resistant ones easily.

      The problem here is that eventually bacteria always find a way to evade antibiotics with low enough metabolic cost.

  5. Re:Scientists and doctors.. by cfalcon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Trump's has spoken up in favor of "spreading out" vaccinations. He hasn't spoken against vaccines in general. Last I checked, there wasn't any data showing that "spreading out" vaccinations either helped or hurt a damned thing. I will point this out- every Republican candidate that was asked about the issue last year basically said the same thing as Trump- so whatever his opinion is, it must play super well with Republicans, and also be considered politically safe (and medically safe, probably) by mainstream candidates like Rubio.

    The anti-vax crowd does love Trump, however, and they clearly think he will make some vaccine related statement at some point. Assuming he doesn't, some fraction of that will stick with Trump over their antivax, and some others will stick with their antivax over Trump. The most likely result of Trump's presidency, regarding vaccines, is that there's slightly fewer antivaxxers in a few years, compared to today.

  6. Re:Indiscriminate antibiotic use in farm animals.. by blindseer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I have to wonder what people think happens on a farm. I grew up on a farm where we had pigs and dairy cattle. We gave the animals antibiotics, but it was rare.

    For the pigs we'd give them a shot of antibiotics when we'd get a batch of new pigs in. A pig's life is short, less than a year, and they'd typically get one shot of antibiotics in their life. Pigs cost money, so do antibiotics, so the job of a pig farmer is to balance those costs. Penicillin is cheap but not free. If a pig got sick then it might get another shot. If it got real sick then it got a different kind of shot, as in from a rifle. The carcass of a pig like that could not be sold for meat but the leather was valuable, for a while at least. At some point the rendering truck stopped picking up the dead pigs for free and started to charge for the service, that's when Dad started to just bury them. Any pigs sold for meat are tested for antibiotics. I'm not sure what happened if they tested positive but Dad would make sure that any pig given a shot would not go to market until enough time has passed for the antibiotics to get out of their system.

    The dairy cattle would also typically get one shot of antibiotics in their life, when they'd get dehorned. This was because they were at risk of infection at this point until the wound healed over. Any cattle given antibiotics recently were not able to be sold for meat, and they are also tested like the pigs. Any cow given antibiotics while milking had the milk discarded until the antibiotics were out of their system. Milk was also regularly tested for antibiotics. If antibiotics were found in the milk this would mean the milk was discarded. Since the milk of an entire herd was put in the same tank a single cow testing positive would contaminate thousands of gallons of milk. I remember having to do this before, Dad was pissed since that meant not getting money for that milk.

    Here's the thing, antibiotics are necessary. I thought it funny too on how much farmers rely on antibiotics if it upset so many people. I saw the value in the Army. When going through in processing I got an antibiotic shot, as did everyone else in the company. It turns out that when you put a lot of living and breathing beings in an enclosed space, be they recruits in a barracks or pigs in a shed, they tend to get sick. I still ended up getting a pretty nasty lung infection while in the Army, they gave me a potent antibiotic that made me sensitive to the sun. I got the worst sunburn in my life then.

    Just say no to antibiotic treated animals.

    If you don't like it then go ahead and buy your "organic" meat or go vegan. I know what farmers do to get animals to market and if these animals weren't treated for infections then meat gets real expensive due to losses. Quality would go down too because healthy animals make tasty meat. Since so many people in this world seem able to eat this meat and live well I'm trying to figure out what the problem is exactly.

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  7. Re:The Georgans have a technology by Cafe+Alpha · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "In Russia, mixed phage preparations may have a therapeutic efficacy of 50%. This equates to the complete cure of 50 of 100 patients with terminal antibiotic-resistant infection. The rate of only 50% is likely to be due to individual choices in admixtures and ineffective diagnosis of the causative agent of infection."