Bad Bugs - No Drugs
From page 136 of the February 2007 issue of Wired.
List of bacteria that are drug resistant to all known medicines.
- Acinetobacter baumannii
- Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)
- Clostridium difficile
As of mid-2008, it is believed that more than a thousand US soldiers, Iraqi civilians, and coalition forces have been
infected with Acinetobacter baumannii. There have been more than seven deaths due to the bacteria in US hospitals where
evacuated soldiers have been sent.
Reports have been circulating that the Department of Defense has been secretly trying to fight antibiotic-resistant
pathogens. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infects healthy people, is spread easily, and kills
90,000 people in US hospitals each year.
Clostridium difficile is another drug-resistant bacterium that attacks people when a lot of antibiotic treatments
have killed off normal intestinal bacteria.
Symptoms of acinetobacter include fever, pneumonia, meningitis, spinal infection, and sepsis of the blood (toxicity
of the blood due to bacterial infection).
Healthy people usually don’t get ill, but they can be colonized by the bacteria and carry it to other people who are
sick or have open wounds.
Until a few years ago, the worst infections could be eliminated using broad-spectrum antibiotics called carbapenems,
but strains of acinetobacter that are immune to all known drugs.
A World War II drug called colistin is now being used to fight bacteria that are resistant to all other drugs.
Colistin is so toxic that it causes kidney damage in one in four patients.