- Hospital superbugs with resistance to a "last resort"
antibiotic have emerged independently in at least eight different countries,
reveals a new study.
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- Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is
a major problem worldwide. It is highly resistant to most antibiotics,
with the exception of vancomycin, which could be relied upon to kill the
superbug.
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- An MRSA bug with increased resistance to vancomycin was
discovered in 1997. But until now this resistance was thought to be emerging
in only one type of MRSA.
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- "The results of our study show that the problem
is much more serious than was previously thought," says Mark Enright,
at the University of Bath, UK, who led the study.
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- "It's only a matter of time, perhaps just years,
before bacteria that cannot be killed by vancomycin develop in some areas,"
he says. "There have already been three cases of this in the US, but
we believe these will become more common."
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- Boils or pimples
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- MRSA is a resistant strain of Staphylococcus aureus,
a common bacterium found in the noses or skin of healthy people. It can
occasionally cause skin infections - such as boils or pimples - which can
usually be treated without antibiotics.
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- But the bug can also cause serious infections, and over
the last 50 years the bacteria have become resistant to various antibiotics.
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- Enright and his team studied 101 MRSA samples, which
were known to be either fully or partially resistant to vancomycin. The
samples came from eight countries; France, UK, Norway, Poland, US, Japan,
Sweden and China.
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- They sequenced some of the bugs' genes to decipher which
strains of MRSA bacteria had given rise to the vancomycin-resistant bugs,
dubbed Vancomycin-intermediate Staphylococcus aureus (VISA).
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- The team found that there were nine strains of VISA bugs
and that had evolved from five different types of MRSA. Previously, all
VISA superbugs were thought to come from one type of MRSA, called the New
York/Japanese clone.
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- Enright believes vancomycin resistance will become more
common as the drug is used to treat the increasing numbers of people who
contract MRSA.
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- Journal reference: Emerging Infectious Diseases (vol
10, p 855)
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