A woman in her 70s who'd recently returned from India to US died in September from a "superbug" infection that resisted all antibiotics, according to a report released Friday.
The woman died from Klebsiella pneumoniae, which is present in the gut and commonly causes urinary tract infections, according to Stat News. She was treated with 14 different antibiotics, but 12 more were tested against the bacteria by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after she died. None of them proved effective.
The woman had spent an extended period of time in India, where drug-resistant bacteria are more common. She fractured her leg while there, and the infection that resulted spread to her bone.
"The patient in this report had inpatient health care exposure in India before receiving care in the United States," the team noted. In such cases, U.S. health care facilities "should obtain a history of health care exposures outside their region upon admission and consider screening for CRE," they said.
Dr. Lei Chen is epidemiologist program manager for the health district, and a co-author of the new report.
She told the Reno Gazette-Journal that it's always possible that staff at a foreign hospital "don't do a good infection control, or they don't have good hygiene, and it could be spread."
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| Klebsiella pneumoniae bacteria, the same species that killed the Nevada woman |
Tests showed she had been infected with an antibiotic-resistant bacterial group called carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE). Worse, this one carried a feared mutation called NDM-1.
CRE refers to a family of drug-resistant bacteria. They've evolved so that a whole class of antibiotics cannot kill them, making them into what are known as superbugs. If they get into the bloodstream and cause an infection, CRE germs kill half their victims.
The NDM-1 mutation makes it even more drug-resistant. While most CREs in the U.S. can be killed with some last-ditch antibiotics, those carrying this mutation resist even more types of antibiotic. Worse, it's often unpredictable which drug will work.
She was treated in isolation so that the bacteria would not spread to other patients, and doctors used special precautions to treat her to avoid infecting themselves, according to The Atlantic
Using antibiotics on drug-resistant bacteria can make the infection worse because the antibiotics kill off all the other bacteria, leaving the immune system vulnerable and only the resistant superbug bacteria left in the system to grow and spread, The Atlantic reported.
Posted by , Published at January 14, 2017 and have
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