WASHINGTON, March 6- Drug-resistant germs called carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) are on the rise in US medical facilities and have become more resistant to last-resort antibiotics during the past decade, US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said Tuesday in its Vital Signs report.
In 2012, about four percent of US acute-care hospitals and 18 percent of long-term acute care hospitals reported at least one case of dangerous CRE bacteria, China’s Xinhua news agency quoted the report, which analysed data from about 3,900 US hospitals in the first six months of 2012.
Enterobacteriaceae are a family of more than 70 bacteria including Klebsiella pneumoniae and E. coli that normally live in the digestive system. Healthy people usually don’t get infected from these germs. Instead, people who are being treated for other illnesses, including those on breathing machines, or who have catheters inserted, are at risk. These bugs can kill up to half of patients who get bloodstream infections from them, the CDC said.
Over time, some of these bacteria have become resistant to a group of antibiotics known as carbapenems, often referred to as last-resort antibiotics. During the last decade, CDC has tracked one type of CRE from a single health care facility to health care facilities in at least 42 states. In some medical facilities, these bacteria already pose a routine challenge to health care professionals.
“CRE are nightmare bacteria,” said Thomas Frieden, CDC director, said in a statement. “Our strongest antibiotics don’t work and patients are left with potentially untreatable infections. Doctors, hospital leaders, and public health must work together now to implement CDC’s detect-and-protect strategy and stop these infections from spreading.”
Though the resistant bugs are still fairly rare, the proportion of infections that were most dangerous increased to 4.2 percent in 2011, from 1.2 percent in 2001 in two of the surveillance systems used to track the bacteria, the CDC said. Most of that increase was in the Klebsiella species, which can cause pneumonia, bloodstream infections, and meningitis.
BERNAMA
