Deadly bacteria defy drugs, alarming doctors

[ColbertWatcher]

Deadly bacteria defy drugs, alarming doctors
A new category of bugs becomes more resistant to treatment, and their toll -- which already includes a Brazilian beauty queen -- is expected to rise.
By Mary Engel
7:51 PM PST, February 16, 2009

Acinetobacter doesn't garner as many headlines as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, the dangerous superbug better known as MRSA. But a January report by the Infectious Diseases Society of America warned that drug-resistant strains of Acinetobacter baumannii and two other microbes -- Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Klebsiella pneumoniae -- could soon produce a toll to rival MRSA's.

The three bugs belong to a large category of bacteria called "gram-negative" that are especially hard to fight because they are wrapped in a double membrane and harbor enzymes that chew up many antibiotics. As dangerous as MRSA is, some antibiotics can still treat it, and more are in development, experts say.

But the drugs once used to treat gram-negative bacteria are becoming ineffective, and finding effective new ones is especially challenging.

"We're literally running out of drugs to treat gram-negatives," said Dr. Brad Spellberg, an infectious disease specialist at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. "And there is nothing in the pipeline right now."

Exact numbers are hard to come by, because infections by these three bacteria are not reportable by law. But using 2002 data voluntarily reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from about 300 large, mostly urban hospitals, the Infectious Diseases Society of America identified about 104,000 gram-negative infections that were resistant to at least some antibiotics, roughly the same as the 102,000 MRSA infections found that year.

A class of broad-spectrum antibiotics known as carbapenems have been the drug of last resort for gram-negative bugs today.

"The carbapenems are . . . the best gram-negative drugs we have," said infectious disease specialist Dr. Helen Boucher of Tufts University. "These bugs have found a way to make an enzyme that dissolves these drugs. That means our best gun is ineffective."

(more)

--Los Angeles Times

[annabanana]

1. I'm beginning to suspect that the only chance of fighting

these superbugs is in quickly advancing fields of genetic research &/or microbiotics.

[ColbertWatcher]

3. That's crazy talk! WITCH! WITCH! n/t

[Th1onein]

2. PA is one of the bacteria that kills CF patients.

The lactoperoxidase system normally kills it. It's an opportunistic bacteria.

[Avalux]

4. This kind of reminds me of "no one could have foreseen...."

We've known for years that without serious R&D of novel new antibiotics, we'd get behind the curve and bacteria would eventually become resistant to the workhorse antibiotics we've depended on for the past 50 years.

The government hasn't felt the need to spend money on research and big pharma won't do it because antibiotics aren't huge money makers for them.

Carbapenems, like the recently approved doripenem, are fast becoming obsolete and there's not much left in the arsenal; nothing in the pipeline.

[laconicsax]

5. Could it be...more proof of evolution by natural selection?

[Avalux]

8. It's microevolution. Bacteria are living organisms...

keep putting the same roadblocks in their way; they figure out a way around eventually.

[ColbertWatcher]

9. So, it is evolution! Yeah science! n/t

[Enthusiast]

14. Micro-macro, fundies care about

these distinctions. Science, not so much. Evolution is evolution. Some don't 'believe' in evolution. But evolution is a matter of evidence, not belief.

[remoulade]

6. In a thousand years, the teeny bugs will be in charge. They probably won't build

nuclear weapons. Their descendants may, though.

[ColbertWatcher]

10. And in 1,000 years there will be one set of bugs that argue ...

... that an intelligent bug designer created all life and his fellow bugs will vote against their own best interests because one of the fatter, stupider bugs told them not to.

[kestrel91316]

7. Gram negatives and Acinetobacter are not in any "new category of bugs".

They've been around forever. We studied them to death in microbiology 30-35 years ago.

[ColbertWatcher]

11. That may be true, but this is the GOP-controlled media.

They're too lazy to do real research and probably wouldn't understand it if they did.

[pansypoo53219]

12. stupid humans

over used the magic pill against bacteria. good job putting anti bacteria in everything. eating stuff that falls on the floor is for your heath. why aren't we extinct already?

[BlooInBloo]

13. They should be the last ones surprised by the predictable result...

of putting such strong selection pressure on germs.