Treating Superbugs: 'The Road is Narrowing'
May 23, 2016
By Matt McMillen
The first U.S. case of a bacterial infection that can’t be treated by a
last-resort antibiotic has been reported in a 49-year-old Pennsylvania
woman. She was found to have a type of E. coli bacteria that carries a gene
resistant to colistin, an antibiotic used when others don’t work.
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are difficult to treat and have become a
grave — and growing — concern. The CDC estimates that at least two million
people are infected with such bacteria each year, and 23,000 die.
To better understand what this means, WebMD spoke with infectious diseases
specialist William Schaffner, MD, medical director of the National
Foundation for Infectious Diseases and a professor of medicine in the
Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine
in Nashville, TN.
WebMD: What type of bacteria did the woman have?
Schaffner: The bacteria that the woman had is a very simple E. coli. This
is a very common bug that we all have in our intestinal tract, and she
apparently had it in her bladder, probably because of a urinary tract
infection.