Superbug resistant to antibiotics could be ‘beginning of the end’
A SUPERBUG resistant to all known medications has been found in the US for the first time. But an Australian pharmaceutical research company think they may have a solution to the superbug crisis.
Recce Ltd has just developed a synthetic antibiotic, which if approved for use, would be resistant to superbugs, its makers claim.
Recce executive chairman Graham Melrose told news.com.au the drug was before Food and Drug Administration approval and he hoped it would be on the market soon.
Dr Melrose said he didn’t believe the discovery of a superbug strain in the US, which was resistant to antibiotic, meant it was the end of the drug as we know it.
The superbug find raised fears it could old signal “the end of the road” for antibiotics.
Department of Defence researchers last month found a Pennsylvanian woman carried a strain of E. coli resistant to the antibiotic colistin.
The drug is the antibiotic used as a very last resort for the world’s most dangerous superbugs.
However Dr Melrose said he thought that was an extreme reaction given antibiotics and bacteria were both found in natural sources.
However the new drug (REECE AB 327) was synethic and as such has been especially designed to kill every germ and superbug it has been put against.
“It has been especially designed not to be suspectible to superbugs,” he said.
“I don’t see it as the end of antibiotics, they are still being developed.”
He said he hoped the drug would be on the market soon as it was obvious there was a need given the rise of superbugs.
The US superbug discovery, published in
Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, a publication of the American Society for Microbiology, said it heralded “the emergence of a truly pan-drug resistant bacteria”.
“It was an old antibiotic, but it was the only one left for what I call nightmare bacteria,” a family of germs known as carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), said Thomas Frieden, chief of the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
The recently discovered antibiotic-resistant gene, known as mcr-1, has also been found in China and Europe.
The report gave no details about the outcome of the 49-year-old woman’s case or how she picked up the bug.
The woman had not travelled outside the United States, so could not have acquired the resistant bacteria elsewhere, Dr Frieden said.
“We know now that the more we look, the more we are going to find.
“We risk being in a post-antibiotic world.”
Staphylococcus is not only potentially deadly but is becoming resistant to some strains of antibiotics.
Source:Alamy
Colistin has been available since 1959 to treat infections caused by E. coli, salmonella and acinetobacter, which can cause pneumonia or serious blood and wound infections.
It was abandoned for human use in the 1980s due to high kidney toxicity, but is widely used in livestock farming, especially in China.
However, colistin has been brought back as a treatment of last resort in hospitals and clinics as bacteria have started developing resistance to other, more modern drugs.
“We need to do a very comprehensive job of protecting antibiotics so we can have them and our children can have them,” Dr Frieden said, calling for more research into new antibiotics and better stewardship of existing drugs.
“The medicine cabinet is empty for some patients.
“It is the end of the road for antibiotics unless we act urgently.”
Staphylococcus aureus superbug bacteria is germ that is resistant to antibiotics.
Source:News Limited
DEADLY WARNING
News of the rise of the antibacterial resistant bug follows a new report which claims superbugs are fast becoming one of the biggest health threats to mankind.
The report, tackling drug-resistant infections globally, was released this month after a two-year investigation by former Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neill who said
.
Superbugs can be deadly, but not in all cases.
However, they are particularly dangerous because they become immune to antibiotic treatment.
This potentially means common gut, urinary and blood infections risk becoming incurable unless new and more powerful drugs are created to combat them.
“Routine surgeries and minor infections will become life-threatening once again and the hard won victories against infectious diseases of the last 50 years will be jeopardised,” the report said.
It also highlighted how it could cost governments across the globe $138 trillion a year.
Experts have warned common infections may not be able to be cured by antibiotics unless more powerful ones are being developed.
Source:News Corp Australia
OVERUSE PROBLEM
It isn’t the first time experts have warned about the hidden dangers of antibiotic resistance.
In a groundbreaking documentary shown on Australian TV in February,
The Diet Myth, UK leading diet and obesity expert Professor Tim Spector revealed how
.
He warned the loss of good bacteria was affecting our guts and making us fatter, especially when consumed at a young age.
“By the time the average Australian is 18 they would have had 16-17 course of antibiotics in their lifetime,” he told news.com.au
“This seriously messes things up.
“It’s like waiting for an atomic bomb to go off.”
