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The start of Zday? Worth monitoring
This could be the pandemic that sets it off. Be alert.
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Permalink Reply by saint.357 on
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Damn thats scary as fuck! We really need to stop the over use of antibiotics before we start the zombie apocalypse!
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Permalink Reply by Komrad Venessa Wicked☭ on
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Bacteria resistant to ALL antibiotics have arrived in Europe, and experts fear it could be the start of a global epidemic of untreatable infections.
Last month, we reported on a gene mutation called MCR-1 that had shown up in bacteria in China. The mutation is resistant to all antibiotics, including colistin, a last-resort drug used to tackle tough bacteria when all other antibiotics have failed.
The superbugs were found in 15% of raw meat samples in China, as well as a fifth of the animals tested. Colistin had also failed in 16 patients infected with drug-resistant infections.
Now a patient in Denmark has been diagnosed with an untreatable form of salmonella, scientists from George Washington University (GWU) and the Statens Serum Institute (SSI) and National Food Institute (NFI) in Denmark announced Friday. In addition, they also found untreatable bacteria in 5 samples of chicken imported from China through Germany.
The Antibiotic Resistance Action Center in the Milken Institute School of Public Health at GWU, said in a statement to National Geographic:
“The news that the dangerous colistin resistance gene has been found in Denmark is alarming. This newly identified gene, called MCR-1, is on a mobile piece of DNA that can make copies of itself and then jump to from bacterium to bacterium, spreading resistance. History shows that these mobile resistance genes can spread around the world quickly, silently riding in people, animals, and food. The news that MCR-1 has been discovered in Denmark suggests that this scenario is playing out in real time.”
The Danish researchers said that when they learned of the new resistance factor, they immediately took a look at the stored genomes they held at their institutions to look for it:
“The approximately 3,000 Gram-negative (E. coli or Salmonella) bacteria, which have previously been mapped using whole genome sequencing, have been reexamined to see whether MCR-1 is present. Results show that MCR-1 was found in one patient, who suffered from a blood infection in 2015 and in five food samples that have been imported from 2012-2014. All the bacteria are multi-resistant ESBL bacteria containing the MCR-1 gene, which can further complicate treatment.”
The Chinese researchers who discovered the untreatable pathogens warned that it could spread globally, but experts are shocked at how quickly they’re making their way around the globe, saying the situation is extremely serious.
And bacteria affected by the MCR-1 gene are especially frightening because they can be transferred to other types of bacteria, which means they could spread quickly between animals and humans.
Professor Frank Møller Aarestrup, a microbiologist at the Technical University of Denmark, said today: “This is a very alarming discovery.
“It is something I had feared, but hoped I would not see.”
Aarestrup said he wouldn’t be surprised if the powerful bugs had already migrated to the U.K. Scientists in New Zealand said the same.
“History shows that these mobile resistance genes can spread around the world quickly, silently riding in people, animals, and food,” said Dr. Lance Prince of GWU. “The news that MCR-1 has been discovered in Denmark suggests that this scenario is playing out in real time.”
Colistin is widely used in farming, particularly in China, where farmers feed it to pigs and chickens en masse to fatten them up. In the U.S., approximately 70% of antibiotics considered vitally important to human health are used in farm animals.
Drug resistance hasn’t become enough of a problem in the U.S. to start using colistin, but it’s only a matter of time until it’s needed. And then, surely, it will only be a matter of time until colistin stops working for Americans.
The GWU ended its statement by saying this:
“We must act swiftly to contain the spread of colistin-resistant bacteria, or we will face increasing numbers of untreatable infections. Leaders from every nation should immediately implement a ban on the use of colistin in animal agriculture. While China appears to be the biggest user of the drug, it is approved for use in the European
Union and many other countries. It also is approved for use in food animals in the U.S., but drug companies holding those approvals are not actively marketing the drugs. Drug companies with these approvals should immediately withdraw these label claims to ensure that colistin is never used in U.S. animal agriculture, otherwise our livestock production facilities could become breeding grounds for untreatable superbugs.
In addition, we need to remember why colistin is the last drug available for treating these dangerous infections. We turned to it because the preferred drug class – carbapenems – became powerless against some superbugs due to overuse. Carbapenems are still effective against many bacteria, but for how long? While carbapenems are not approved for use in animal agriculture in many parts of the world, their use is not explicitly banned. World leaders should call for an immediate ban on carbapenems to protect them for future generations.”
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Information that could be lifesaving is priceless... Thank you!
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Permalink Reply by Hoodyz on
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I try. We have to stay alert and be ready to be a head of it. Once it spreads to the mass populous, it may already be too late.
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Permalink Reply by Komrad Mercenary☭ on
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Any update on this bacteria resistant to ALL antibiotics?
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here is the latest's news i could find, and it looks pretty bad.
Several new reports in the Lancet Infectious Diseases suggest the spread of this newly found resistance gene, mcr-1, is far worse than it initially appeared. Here are the latest findings from several just-released studies.
In some ways the most disturbing to me was the part of the “COMBAT” study that looked at how often Dutch travelers picked up the highly resistant superbug ESBL (that I’ve written about here). Researchers took stool samples from 2,001 travelers before and after their trips. Disturbingly, they found that 34% of the travelers acquired ESBL-producing Enterobacteriaceae after trips of 1-6 weeks’ duration. Nine of these travelers had a colistin-resistant ESBL isolate, and the mcr-1 resistance gene was found in six of the nine. (Resistance in the others occurred by different mechanisms). Interestingly, 5/6 had developed traveler’s diarrhea; none had taken any antibiotics. These unrelated travelers had apparently acquired their resistant genes during visits to Peru, Bolivia, China, Tunisia, and SE Asia, suggesting that the mcr-1 colistin resistance gene has been circulating for some time, undetected.
Other Chinese researchers have come to that same conclusions about occult, asymptomatic colonization and dissemination, finding the mcr-1 gene in several human gut microbiome samples, which they describe as an antibiotic resistance gene reservoir.
While the initial mcr-1 colistin resistance was found in E. coli bacteria, another study from the Netherlands’ COMBAT consortium of universities found that an identical mcr-1 gene was also found in a Salmonella enterica serotype Typhimurium isolate from a food sample in Portugal, almost identical to those found previously in southern China. This suggests both that there may be a broader range of bacteria that can be affected by this plasmid, and again that the geographic spread is far broader.
Recommended by ForbesSimilarly, French researchers screened E. coli isolates from pigs, people and poultry from Laos, Thailand, France, Nigeria.... They found the mcr-1 gene in isolates from each of those countries, including a strain that had been transferred from a pig to a farmer. They warn that the spread is likely worse, especially in Africa, where colistin is widely used in livestock production.
Meat production
Last week, I noted that China has heavy colistin use in its agriculture industry, and that this raises concerns about meat imports into the U.S. Polymyxins (the colistin class) are also heavily used in Europe. The U.S. imports small amounts of beef from Denmark and Croatia, and considerable pork from Poland and Denmark. Millions of head of cattle and hogs are imported, mostly from Canada and Mexico. (In June, 2015, the House voted to repeal the requirement for country-of-origin labels ... as part of a World Trade Organization dispute with Canada and Mexico. This is still pending in Congress.
Besides allowing labeling, the first thing experts agree on is that we must immediately stop the use of widespread use of colistin in animals as a growth promoter. The drug should either be banned outright, or have severely restricted use for ill animals.
Implications
What does all this talk about resistance genes and WTO fights mean to you?
First, the cat’s out of the bag. The mcr-1 gene has now been found in veterinary, meat and food samples, and human stool samples from four continents. Lance Price, Director of the Antibiotic Resistance Action Center at George Washington University, notes that the insidiousness of the spread “underscores the critical need for real, integrated surveillance between hospitals, communities and livestock” industries. He added to me, “We have no regulatory tools to stop the trade of these products” because these bacteria are classified as “normal flora” and not pathogens, as E. coli O157 is.
It appears to me that the food industry lobbyists are seemingly as busy and successful as the NRA. Unless regulators stand up to strong-arm tactics, we will soon begin to see deaths from these new untreatable superbugs grow and threaten us just as the senseless gun deaths do.
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yeah this thing is scary cause it can pretty much make any bacteria immune to antibiotics. If we're not careful this could quickly develop into an aids level epidemic.
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I'm worried more than AIDS; they've been using that since the 70's. I'm thinking more like Zday in the sense it could spread fast and kill a lot of people in a relatively short time. This may be another Black Death or something along those lines.
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