- namaste friends
- Sep 18, 2004
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by Smythe
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https://www.ft.com/content/d6523eaa-ede5-11e6-930f-061b01e23655?ftcamp=published_links%2Frss%2Fworld_asia-pacific_china%2Ffeed%2F%2Fproduct
quote:
Resistance to ‘last-resort’ antibiotic spreads from farms in China
Researchers say transfer from flies to humans adds urgency to drug development
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https://www.ft.com/content/d6523eaa-ede5-11e6-930f-061b01e23655?ftcamp=published_links%2Frss%2Fworld_asia-pacific_china%2Ffeed%2F%2Fproduct
Bacteria resistant to colistin, the so-called last resort antibiotic, are probably being transferred to humans from poultry farms in China, say researchers, adding to fears that time to develop new types of medicine is running out.
The 2015 discovery in China of bacteria with mcr-1, the colistin resistance gene, sparked fears over the future of human health. Margaret Chan, head of the World Health Organization, said last year that medicine risked “going back to the dark ages” without action to spur development of new antibiotics and to preserve the dwindling numbers that remain effective.
Since the discovery in animals on farms where colistin was widely used as a growth enhancer, bacteria with mrc-1 have been identified in more than 30 countries including the US, Germany, Spain, Thailand and Vietnam. A patient in the US was found to have been infected with e-Coli carrying the gene last year.
Developed for clinical use in 1959, colistin was little used on human patients because of side effects including kidney damage. But it has been thrust under a spotlight as resistance to the more commonly used family of last-resort antibiotics known as carbapenems has risen, provoking alarm among health professionals.
E-Coli bacteria with the mcr-1 gene were found among patients at Chinese hospitals in two large cities, according to a study in the Lancet last month. The incidence of resistant strains was around 1 per cent, the researchers said. “The emergence of mcr-1 heralds the breach of the last group of antibiotics,” said Professor Tim Walsh of Cardiff University, one of the paper’s authors.
According to a separate paper published this week in Nature Microbiology, the same team found high rates of bacteria with colistin resistance genes in flies at poultry farms in China, suggesting the insects could spread resistance.
“There is a higher rate of incidence among people living close to farms,” said Jianzhong Shen of the China Agriculture University, one of that paper’s authors. “That’s an interesting result. Flies and migratory birds are probably important modes of transmission. Drug-resistant genes can be transmitted through the environment, through the animal food chain and to humans.
“It is a warning that in animal breeding we must use antibiotics sparingly, and ensure that facilities are kept clean to cut the chain of transmission,” Dr Shen added.
Some bacteria the researchers found in flies and in poultry for sale in Chinese markets carried bacteria resistant to both colistin and carbapenem, raising the risks of “super bacteria” resistant to several kinds of last-resort antibiotics.
Yu Yunsong of Zhejiang University co-authored a separate study published in the Lancet last month that found mcr-1 and carbapenem-resistant bacteria in samples from 28 Chinese hospitals, but said it was “too early to say that super bacteria resistant to all antibiotics are imminent”.
China reacted to the discovery of colistin-resistant bacteria on farms by banning the use of the drug as a growth stimulant for animals last year. But its use to treat sick animals is not restricted, and Chinese hospitals plan to begin using it to treat human patients this year. Dr Yu said that efforts to reduce the rampant over-prescription of antibiotics in Chinese hospitals, which are dependent on drug sales for revenues, are beginning to see results.
China is the world’s top producer of colistin, with Hebei province in the north home to the world’s largest factory producing the antibiotic, with output capacity of 10,000 tonnes a year for domestic use and export. Despite the ban the Financial Times was able to find several Chinese websites selling colistin for agricultural use.
I thought this might deserve it's own thread.
More from PRI.
https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-01-17/think-antibiotic-resistant-super-bugs-are-only-distant-threat-think-again
quote:
Think antibiotic-resistant 'super-bugs' are only a distant threat? Think again.
If it sometimes seems like the idea of antibiotic resistance, though unsettling, is more theoretical than real, please read on.
Public health officials from Nevada are reporting on a case of a woman who died in Reno in September from an incurable infection. Testing showed the superbug that had spread throughout her system could fend off 26 different antibiotics.
“It was tested against everything that’s available in the United States … and was not effective,” said Dr. Alexander Kallen, a medical officer in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s division of health care quality promotion.
Although this isn’t the first time someone in the US has been infected with pan-resistant bacteria, at this point, it is not common. It is, however, alarming.
“I think this is the harbinger of future badness to come,” said Dr. James Johnson, a professor of infectious diseases medicine at the University of Minnesota and a specialist at the Minnesota VA Medical Center.
Other scientists are saying this case is yet another sign that researchers and governments need to take antibiotic resistance seriously. It was reported Thursday in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a journal published by the CDC.
The authors of the report note this case underscores the need for hospitals to ask incoming patients about foreign travel and also about whether they had recently been hospitalized elsewhere.
The case involved a woman who had spent considerable time in India, where multi-drug-resistant bacteria are more common than they are in the US. She had broken her right femur — the big bone in the thigh — while in India a couple of years back. She later developed a bone infection in her femur and her hip and was hospitalized a number of times in India in the two years that followed. Her last admission to a hospital in India was in June of last year.
The unnamed woman — described as a resident of Washoe County who was in her 70s — went into hospital in Reno for care in mid-August, where it was discovered she was infected with what is called a CRE — carbapenem-resistant enterobacteriaceae. That’s a general name to describe bacteria that commonly live in the gut that have developed resistance to the class of antibiotics called carbapenems — an important last-line of defense used when other antibiotics fail. CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden has called CREs “nightmare bacteria” because of the danger they pose for spreading antibiotic resistance.
In the woman’s case, the specific bacteria attacking her was called Klebsiella pneumoniae, a bug that often causes of urinary tract infections.
Testing at the hospital showed resistance to 14 drugs — all the drug options the hospital had, said Lei Chen, a senior epidemiologist with Washoe County Health District and an author of the report. “It was my first time to see a [resistance] pattern in our area,” she said.
A sample was sent to the CDC in Atlanta for further testing, which revealed that nothing available to US doctors would have cured this infection. Kallen admitted people in this field experience a sinking feeling when they’re faced with a superbug like this one.
“I think it’s concerning. We have relied for so long on just newer and newer antibiotics. But obviously the bugs can often [develop resistance] faster than we can make new ones,” he said.
Doctors and scientists who track the spread of antibiotic resistance — the rapidly proliferating swarm superbugs — see this case as a big red flag.
“If we’re waiting for some sort of major signal that we need to attack this internationally, we need an aggressive program, both domestically and internationally to attack this problem, here’s one more signal that we need to do that,” said Lance Price, who heads the Antibiotic Resistance Action Center at George Washington University.
There is international recognition of the threat, which an expert report published last year warned could kill 10 million a year by 2050 if left unchecked. In September, the UN General Assembly held a high-level meeting on antibiotic resistance, only the fourth time the body had addressed a health issue.
The woman in Nevada was cared for in isolation; the staff who treated her used infection control precautions to prevent spread of the superbug in the hospital. Chen and Randall Todd, a health department colleague, told STAT testing was done to look for additional infections, but so far none have been detected.
Johnson said it’s likely, though, that other people in the US are carrying similar bacteria in their guts and could become sick at some point. “It’s possible that this is the only person in the US and she had the bad luck to go to India, pick up the bad bug, come back and here it is, we found her and now that she’s dead, it’s gone from the US. That is highly improbable,” he said.
“People have asked me many times ‘How scared should we be?’ … ‘How close are we to the edge of the cliff?’ And I tell them: We’re already falling off the cliff,” Johnson said. “It’s happening. It’s just happening — so far — on a relatively small scale and mostly far away from us. People that we don’t see … so it doesn’t have the same emotional impact.’’
he;lp
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Feb 8, 2017 20:59
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ADBOT LOVES YOU
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May 9, 2024 20:47
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- namaste friends
- Sep 18, 2004
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by Smythe
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It's right in the articles I posted you guys. Big ag is the problem.
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Feb 9, 2017 03:58
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Feb 8, 2017 20:59
