I remember when I first watched War of the Worlds. I was in high school and already nervous about seeing what I deemed a “scary” movie. The movie was almost over when a huge thunderstorm hit the area and the theater lost power. My friend turned to me and said, “Isn’t this how the movie started?”
I vowed never to see a movie with them again!
Besides the situationally scary ending, I liked the movie, and the idea that our Earth bacteria could kill aliens was something I had not considered before.
Now, where is this story going?
Today, in a much scarier reality, doctors have identified bacteria that could not only kill aliens, but is killing thousands of people due to its resistance to antibiotics.
In January 2017, the CDC announced that a woman in Nevada had died from an infection resistant to every available antibiotic. Image credit
The woman picked up a germ from a group of microbes called carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriacase (CRE) after breaking her leg and spending time in a hospital in India. Tests showed that none of the 26 antibiotics typically used to treat this type of infection would have cured her.
Pan-resistant bacteria have infected people in the United before. “It’s not the first time that there has been an untreatable bacterial infection in the US,” says James Hughes, co-director of the Emory Antibiotic Resistance Center in Atlanta. “This particular case… is an extreme example of how bad it can get.”
Germs can mutate to become resistant to a given antibiotic or pick up resistance-granting genes from other species. There is an increase in the number of bacteria resistant to top-shelf antibiotics like the colistin and carbapenem class. These last line of dense drugs cause other problems, like kidney damage, in patients.
While bacteria resistant to colistin was identified in 2015 and carbapenem-resistant bacteria was discovered just last December, not all developing bacteria are necessarily resistant to all types of antibiotics. The fear is that superbugs develop that can combine everything doctors are able to treat it with, as was the case for the women in Nevada.
Deadly cases of antibiotic-resistant bacteria are still rare. At least 2 million people came down with an antibiotic resistant infection in America last year and of those cases, 23,000 died. These cases are expensive and time-consuming. Doctors may not know the bacteria is resistant until an antibiotic is prescribed and it doesn’t work. This gives the infection more time to progress.
Superbugs tend to only affect already sick or weakened people. There have been several rare cases of otherwise healthy people becoming infected and we do not know how many people are serving as “hosts” and will spread the infection to others.
According to scientists, it’s hard to predict how much worse antibiotic-resistant bacteria could get. They do know that if something isn’t done soon, minor injuries and common medical procedures like C-sections and hip replacements will become much more dangerous and tuberculosis and gonorrhea could become untreatable.
Right now, scientists are tracking which bacteria are developing resistance to antibiotics, which will help epidemiologists respond to outbreaks.
In the meantime, everyone needs to be conscious of prevention efforts such as basic hygiene, as well as using antibiotics more responsibly and curtailing their use in farm animals. In addition, there needs to be incentives for drug companies to develop new antibiotics, alternative treatments, and methods to diagnose infections more quickly.
“We’ll never totally eliminate the problem of antibiotic resistance,” Hughes says. “But we can do a heck of a lot better in terms of being prepared to detect it, respond to it, treat it effectively and prevent much of the… potential future increases in the problem.”
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