Dangerous bacteria on increase: expert
LONDON (Reuters) - A dangerous, drug-resistant bacterium normally found in soil and water is on the increase in hospitals worldwide, an infectious disease expert warned on Tuesday.
Acinetobacter baumannii is more resistant than the MRSA superbug and accounts for about 30 percent of drug-resistant hospital infections, said Matthew Falagas, director of the Alfa Institute of Biomedical Sciences in Greece.
“There is a growing frequency of A baumannii infections in various hospitals around the world,” Falagas, also a professor at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, said in a telephone interview.
“The infections are difficult to treat because the bugs are resistant to most agents.”
Bacteria such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus, or MRSA, are a growing problem worldwide. They can cause life-threatening and disfiguring infections and can only be treated with expensive drugs.
Last week researchers said a common and sometimes deadly cause of diarrhea, drug-resistant Clostridium difficile, was far more prevalent in U.S. hospitals than previously thought. They said as many as 13 of every 1,000 patients were infected.
Drug-resistant bugs are often spread in hospitals, nursing homes or other health care facilities.
“The role of A baumannii as a pathogen causing serious infections in critically ill patients has become increasingly clear,” Falagas wrote in the journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
“This pathogen is associated with institutional outbreaks that are difficult to control.”
Doctors are now turning to antibiotics called polymyxins to fight it. The drugs have not been used much in the past 20 years in part because of side effects that include kidney problems, Falagas said.
This means doctors need new drugs to fight the bug. But the best weapon remains washing to stop the spread of A baumannii, which can live for many weeks on dry surfaces, he added.
“Good hand washing among hospital personnel is the number one important measure,” Falagas said.
(Reporting by Michael Kahn; editing by Will Dunham and Andrew Roche)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Related Posts:
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A new study is investigating whether a tea tree oil body wash can prevent the drug-resistant super bug MRSA in critically ill hospitalized adults. Tea tree oil body wash “may be a simple intervention to prevent MRSA,” Dr. Bronagh Blackwood from Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland, told Reuters Health. MRSA — short
Full Post: Doctors test tea tree oil body wash for MRSA
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LONDON (Reuters) - Giving antibiotics to patients in intensive care units as a precaution saves lives, according to a major Dutch study published Wednesday. The findings in the New England Journal of Medicine suggest the benefits of administering antibiotics right away, even before an infection develops, outweigh the risks people will develop resistance to them, the
Full Post: Antiobitics before infections save lives: study
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Children in the United States increasingly are developing serious head and neck infections with a drug-resistant type of “superbug” bacteria called MRSA, U.S. researchers said on Monday. They said rates of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, are rising in children, and called on doctors to be more judicious in prescribing antibiotics. “There is a
Full Post: Serious infections rising in U.S. children: study
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The hardest-to-treat form of drug-resistant tuberculosis is a growing threat in many parts of the world, but remains quite rare in the United States, U.S. government health researchers said on Tuesday. From 1993 through 2007, there were 83 cases of extensively drug-resistant TB, or XDR-TB, reported in the United States, U.S.
Full Post: Hardest-to-treat form of TB rare in U.S.: study
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Tan Ee Lyn HONG KONG (Reuters) - Drug-resistant HIV strains are turning up in parts of China as the virus stretches beyond high-risk groups and gains a stronger foothold in the general population, a leading Chinese AIDS researcher said. Chen Zhiwei, director of the AIDS Institute in Hong Kong, described the trends as “alarming” and warned
Full Post: Drug-resistant HIV strains turning up in China