The efficiency of antibiotics is decreasing due to the spread of a bacterial gene conferring high levels of drug resistance.
Source: The Guardian
International travel and medical tourism have led to the rapid, global spread of drug-resistant bacteria that may presage the end of antibioticsand leave doctors struggling to treat infected patients, scientists warn today.
A new gene conferring high levels of resistance to almost all antibiotics has been found to be widespread in forms of gut bacteria that can cause potentially life-threatening pneumonia and urinary tract infections.
In just three years, says Professor Tim Walsh of Cardiff University who discovered the gene, it has grown in prevalence from being rarely observed at all to existing in between 1% and 3% in patients withEnterobacteriaceae infections in India.
“It is absolutely staggering,” said Walsh. “Because of international travel, globalisation and medical tourism, [the gene] now has the opportunity to go anywhere in the world very quickly.”
Walsh’s paper on the spread of drug-resistant bacteria containing the gene appears today in the Lancet infectious diseases journal.
He and his colleagues have found NDM-1 (New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase) 1 positive bacteria not only in India and Pakistan but also in the UK. Some of the infected British patients had travelled to India for kidney or bone marrow transplants, dialysis, pregnancy care or burns treatment, while others had undergone cosmetic surgery.
Walsh says it is not possible to know how widespread the bacteria now is in the UK. The Health Protection Agency has issued an alert, but doctors report only those cases they treat.
Alarmingly, there are only two antibiotics that still work against NDM 1-producing bacteria, and the likelihood is that they will also be overcome before long.
“In many ways, this is it,” he said. “This is potentially the end. There are no antibiotics in the pipeline that have activity against NDM 1-producingEnterobacteriaceae.”
