Deadly Germ Resisting Drugs, Researchers Say
ATLANTA — A staph germ that causes thousands of often deadly infections among hospital patients each year is becoming resistant to medicine’s drug of last resort and could soon prove unstoppable, federal health officials say.
A new strain of staphylococcus aureus bacteria that was discovered in a Japanese infant showed resistance for the first time against vancomycin, which has been around since 1970 and is used when other antibiotics fail.
The 4-month-old child developed a boil while recovering from heart surgery. The bacteria strain had an “intermediate†level of resistance to the antibiotic, one step away from becoming immune, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
“The strain is marching up the ladder of resistance,†Dr. Fred Tenover, laboratory chief of the CDC’s hospital infections branch, warned Wednesday. “It is not a cause for panic, but it is a cause for concern.â€
The strain has not yet reached U.S. hospitals, but health experts said it is only a matter of time.
In the meantime, the CDC and other experts said, hospitals need to tighten their practices to prevent the spread of germs, and doctors should use antibiotics more sparingly. Pharmaceutical companies are already working on new antibiotics.
The Dallas Morning News reported the resistance Wednesday.
Staph bacteria are the No. 1 cause of hospital infections. They are blamed for about 13% of the nation’s 2 million hospital infections each year, according to the CDC. Overall, these 2 million infections kill 60,000 to 80,000 people.
Doctors have long known that many common bacteria are growing resistant to antibiotics.
The resistance is attributed to overuse of antibiotics and the failure of some patients to take their medicine properly. Some patients stop taking their medication once they feel better but before the infection has been knocked out.
Before antibiotics, staphylococcus aureus was one of the most deadly germs. Penicillin killed staph when the drug became available in 1947, but within a decade some strains grew resistant. Then came methicillin in the 1960s, then vancomycin, which was so potent it was regarded as medicine’s “silver bullet†against staph.
But now “the germ has taken the first step by learning to become resistant. We expect in another year or two or three, we might see it fully resistant,†said Robert Haley, chief of epidemiology at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.
Japanese doctors were able to treat the infant’s infection using a drug not licensed in the United States in combination with another drug that goes by the name Unasyn in the United States.
