OCTOBER23
New member
OFF THE NET
PIG CREATED SUPER BUG
Another reason to keep Kosher.
Researchers from several Chinese, British and US universities announced in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases that they have identified a new form of resistance, to the very last-ditch drug colistin—and that it is present in both meat animals and people, probably comes from agricultural use of that drug, can move easily among bacteria, and may already be spreading across borders.
This is very bad news.
To understand why, it’s necessary to know a little bit about colistin. It is an old drug: It was first introduced in 1959. It has been on the shelf, without seeing much use, for most of the years since, because it can be toxic to the kidneys. And precisely because it hasn’t been used much, bacteria have not developed much resistance to it. It remains effective.
That neglect turned out to be very fortunate a few years ago when several different resistance factors—NDM, OXA, KPC—started hopscotching around the globe. All of them made bacteria invulnerable to a group of drugs called carbapenems that had been considered a last line of defense: They were the last drugs that were in common use and were able to take care of complex infections that happen in hospitals, caused by E. coli, Klebsiella, Acinetobacter and similar gut-dwelling organisms. Once those bacteria became resistant to carbapenems (earning them the general name of “carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae,” or CREs), colistin was all that was left—and colistin use began rising.
======================================
PIG CREATED SUPER BUG
Another reason to keep Kosher.
Researchers from several Chinese, British and US universities announced in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases that they have identified a new form of resistance, to the very last-ditch drug colistin—and that it is present in both meat animals and people, probably comes from agricultural use of that drug, can move easily among bacteria, and may already be spreading across borders.
This is very bad news.
To understand why, it’s necessary to know a little bit about colistin. It is an old drug: It was first introduced in 1959. It has been on the shelf, without seeing much use, for most of the years since, because it can be toxic to the kidneys. And precisely because it hasn’t been used much, bacteria have not developed much resistance to it. It remains effective.
That neglect turned out to be very fortunate a few years ago when several different resistance factors—NDM, OXA, KPC—started hopscotching around the globe. All of them made bacteria invulnerable to a group of drugs called carbapenems that had been considered a last line of defense: They were the last drugs that were in common use and were able to take care of complex infections that happen in hospitals, caused by E. coli, Klebsiella, Acinetobacter and similar gut-dwelling organisms. Once those bacteria became resistant to carbapenems (earning them the general name of “carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae,” or CREs), colistin was all that was left—and colistin use began rising.
======================================