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Researchers Discover Colistin-Heteroresistant Germs In the US (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: For the first time, researchers have discovered strains of a deadly, multidrug-resistant bacterium that uses a cryptic method to also evade colistin, an antibiotic used as a last-resort treatment. That's according to a study of U.S. patients published this week by Emory University researchers in the open-access microbiology journal mBio. The wily and dangerous bacteria involved are carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae or CRKP, which are already known to resist almost all antibiotics available, including other last-line antibiotics called carbapenems. The germs tend to lurk in clinical settings and can invade the urinary tract, bloodstream, and soft tissues. They're members of a notorious family of multidrug-resistant pathogens, called carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), which collectively have mortality rates as high as 50 percent and have spread rapidly around the globe in recent years. A 2013 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that there were more than 9,300 CRE infections in the U.S. each year, leading to 600 deaths. Both the CDC and the World Health Organization have listed CRE as one of the critical drug-resistant threats to public health, in need of "urgent and aggressive action."
In the new study, the Emory researchers discovered two strains of CRKP -- isolated from the urine of patients in Atlanta, Georgia -- that can also resist colistin. But they do so in a poorly understood, surreptitious way. At first, they appear vulnerable to the potent antibiotic in standard clinical tests, but with more advanced testing and exposure to the drug, they reveal that they can indeed survive it. In mice, the strains caused infections that couldn't be cured by colistin and the mice died of the infections. Mice infected with typical CRKP were all saved with colistin. So far, there's no evidence of CRKP infections surprisingly turning up resistant to colistin during treatment in patients. But the authors, led by microbiologist David Weiss, say that may be because the evidence is difficult to gather, and the data so far is cause for concern. The researchers concluded that the findings "serve to sound the alarm about a worrisome and under-appreciated phenomenon in CRKP infections and highlight the need for more sensitive and accurate diagnostics."
In the new study, the Emory researchers discovered two strains of CRKP -- isolated from the urine of patients in Atlanta, Georgia -- that can also resist colistin. But they do so in a poorly understood, surreptitious way. At first, they appear vulnerable to the potent antibiotic in standard clinical tests, but with more advanced testing and exposure to the drug, they reveal that they can indeed survive it. In mice, the strains caused infections that couldn't be cured by colistin and the mice died of the infections. Mice infected with typical CRKP were all saved with colistin. So far, there's no evidence of CRKP infections surprisingly turning up resistant to colistin during treatment in patients. But the authors, led by microbiologist David Weiss, say that may be because the evidence is difficult to gather, and the data so far is cause for concern. The researchers concluded that the findings "serve to sound the alarm about a worrisome and under-appreciated phenomenon in CRKP infections and highlight the need for more sensitive and accurate diagnostics."
The poster presented a hypothesis along with a rationale for it, and admitted that he didn't have compelling evidence of a connection in this specific case.
And the best you can do is pass moral judgment on the post for this very admission?
Amazing.
You are correct about the health care industry in general. For example the way companies try to keep people on dialysis instead of cheaper and more effective treatments is a criminal act and has undoubtedly caused many many needless deaths (see John Oliver). But, it's not really the doctors just wanting to make money. Management has these doctors on extremely tight schedules, keeps detailed records of all activity, and pressures them constantly to turn out more procedures and more expensive proceedures per day in a way that would make any sales staff manager proud. The goal of unbridled profit is not anywhere near maximizing patient care, that's why Americans pay over double any other country for healthcare, yet the outcomes are far worse putting the USA 31st in the world among all countries for life span, 5 spots below Slovenia. If we cut out the waste by disbanding all health insurance companies, price capped it to be just over what any other country paid, we could give all Americans free healthcare, free college for all, and still spend a trillion dollars less per year than we do on so called "health care" alone.
Antibiotics in meat is the #1 cause. Instead of letting genetically diverse animals graze and live in a storybook farm setting, animals are nearly clones and are packed cheek to jowl and force fed suboptimal food that maximizes growth. To keep profits as high as possible they are force fed antibiotics 24-7-365 by the hundreds of millions. This is the most effective way to develop resistance outside of engineering it in a lab setting. It also is a problem in that people want antibiotics for everything, and often don't even finish the course. Between these two practices many of our antibiotics are now becoming worthless. Further there is little money to be made on antibiotics but billions keeping the incurably sick alive, if only for awhile so there is a massive negative pressure to using antibiotics responsibly.