Mike the Mad Biologist has some worrisome new findings on Acinetobacter, an emerging bacterial pathogen that has cropped up in the Middle East and Mexico. Mike discusses a new study on Acinetobacter genomics, showing that it has an island with 45 resistance genes, and that it's resistant to damn near everything. Just what we need--more "superbugs."
- Log in to post comments
More like this
One of my many pet peeves is that nobody takes 'ordinary' bacterial infections seriously. I originally wrote this post Jan. 8, 2006, but I was ranting about Acinetobacter since the previous August. The good news is that people other than infectious disease specialists are worrying about it. The…
In the midst of the concern about TEH SWINEY FLOO!, very few people (other than the Mad Biologist), have been discussing the double whammy of influenza followed by bacterial infections. A couple of years ago, I first started describing reports of KPCs:
No, KPC isn't a new fast food restaurant. It'…
I've previously mentioned a bacterial pathogen called Acinetobacter baumannii (a bit more information here), and Mike has discussed it rather frequently. A. baumannii is ordinarilly a commensal bacterium--one that may live on the skin of healthy people for many years without ever causing disease…
I've posted before about the possible approval of cefquinome in agriculture, and why this is a stupid thing to even consider. So some colleagues and I got cranky and wrote a letter to the FDA.
Here's the letter:
Andrew C. von Eschenbach, M.D.
Acting Commissioner
U.S. Food and Drug Administration…
Sorta on-topic: NPR had a story on the long term use of antibiotics to treat acne in teens. One of the things said was that they were using low-dosing to reduce some of the side effects.
But it seems to me that low-dosing increases the risks associated with antibiotic resistance. If you're using enough to have an effect on acne, you're using enough to kill bacteria -- but by low-dosing, aren't you also lowering the resistance bar -- allowing more moderately resistant bacteria to survive than otherwise would? I figured I'd ask here, since you are the person I thought of when I heard the story.
Good question. That's long been the concern with the use of antibiotics in farm animals: they're given at sub-clinical doses to improve growth, which seems like the ideal conditions for the development of resistance. To my knowledge, that's not been rigorously tested, but I've not reviewed that area as well as I should have. Mike's an antibiotic professional, though, so you might want to hit him with that question.