Maryn McKenna

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World Health Organization: Antibiotic Resistance Grave Global Problem

May 5, 2014 By Maryn Leave a Comment

NathanReading-staph

Image: Nathan Reading (CC), Flickr

The World Health Organization has released a significant report marking what I think must be the first attempt to quantify antibiotic resistance globally. It’s a very sobering read — not just for what the data says about the advance of resistance worldwide, but also because of what the organization could not say, because the data doesn’t exist.

The numbers themselves are unsettling. Dr. Keiji Fukuda, the WHO’s assistant director general, told the press: “It’s clear that rates are very high of resistance among bacteria causing many of the most common serious infections – the ones that we see both occurring in the community as well as in hospitals … In all regions of the world, we now see that hospitals are reporting untreatable, or nearly untreatable, infections.”

But the gaps in the numbers are too: There are 194 member countries in the WHO, but only 114 had the data-gathering resources to contribute something to the report, and only 22 were able to send in data on the most important occurrences of resistance in very common bacteria. Thus it’s possible that the report could be an under-estimate, or an over-estimate. But I can’t think of a scenario in which it could be considered substantially inaccurate. Its portrait of a world in which antibiotic resistance is advancing to grave proportions ought to be taken seriously.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Science, Science Blogs, Superbug Tagged With: antibiotics, CRE, E. coli, gonorrhea, NDM, Resistance, Who

CDC: Foodborne Illness in the U.S. Not Getting Better

April 17, 2014 By Maryn Leave a Comment

AnotherPintPlease (CC), Flickr

Image: AnotherPintPlease (CC), Flickr

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention today released their annual survey of foodborne illnesses in the United States, and the news is, well, not great. In the words of the press announcement they sent out to announce the data release: “limited progress.”

The survey — technically the Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network, but usually known as FoodNet — doesn’t cover the entire US; it’s a representative sample drawn from 10 sites in nine states where the CDC already has arrangements with epidemiologists and laboratory personnel. Those 10 sites, most of them at state health departments, cover 48 million people, or about 15 percent of the US population. So among that slice, in 2013, there were:

  • 19,056 lab-confirmed foodborne illnesses,
  • 4,200 of which were severe enough to cause the person to be hospitalized,
  • and 80 of which caused the person’s death.

(For context, the CDC’s extrapolation of foodborne illness nationwide, made in 2011, was 48 million illnesses, 128,000 hospitalizations and 3,000 deaths.)

The agency compared the 2013 numbers against two sets of data, one set taken covering 2010-12 and the other 2006-08. Its summation, from its report in its weekly publication MMWR:

Compared with 2010–2012, the estimated incidence of infection in 2013 was lower for Salmonella, higher for Vibrio, and unchanged overall. Since 2006–2008, the overall incidence has not changed significantly. More needs to be done.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Science, Science Blogs, Superbug Tagged With: CDC, E. coli, FSIS, salmonella, USDA

Serious Resistant Infections Increasingly Found in Children

March 24, 2014 By Maryn Leave a Comment

Photo: Ishai Parasol/Flickr

Photo: Ishai Parasol/Flickr

Here’s some disturbing news published late last week in the Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society by a team of researchers from two Chicago medical institutions plus an expert analyst of antibiotic resistance: Serious drug-resistant infections in children are rising across the United States. While the rate of their occurrence remains low overall, they nonetheless increased two- to three-fold over 10 years.
[Read more…]

Filed Under: Science, Science Blogs, Superbug Tagged With: E. coli, Science Blogs

CDC Threat Report: Yes, Agricultural Antibiotics Play a Role in Drug Resistance

September 17, 2013 By Maryn Leave a Comment

Campylobacter bacteria. Image: CDC

The grave assessment on the advance of drug resistance, released Monday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, contained some important observations about the relationship between antibiotic use in agriculture and resistant infections in humans. Those observations, combined with remarks made yesterday by the director of the CDC and also with testimony given in the past by other CDC personnel, ought to put to rest what seems like a persistent meme: that the CDC has never said, or doesn’t believe, that agricultural antibiotic use plays a role in the advance of resistance.

This is important because it puts the CDC in line with a substantial body of research pointing to agricultural use playing a role in the emergence of resistance outside farm properties. With the CDC agreeing — plus, to some degree, the Food and Drug Administration — surely it’s time to move on to whether there are things that could be done to curb the risks posed by some ag practices, while respecting the role that livestock-raising in particular plays as a substantial economic sector, and as an engine in feeding the world.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Science, Science Blogs, Superbug Tagged With: agriculture, animals, antibiotics, CDC, E. coli, FDA, Resistance, salmonella, Science Blogs

Antibiotic Use in Chickens: Responsible for Hundreds of Human Deaths?

August 9, 2013 By Maryn Leave a Comment

Flickr: Thousand Robots, CC

In the long back and forth between science and agriculture over the source of antibiotic resistance in humans — Due to antibiotic overuse on farms, or in human medicine? — one question has been stubbornly hard to answer. If antibiotic-resistant bacteria do arise on farms, do they leave the farm and circulate in the wider world? And if they do, how much damage do they do?

A multi-national team of researchers recently published their answers to both questions. Their answer: In Europe, 1,518 deaths and 67,236 days in the hospital, every year, which would not otherwise have occurred.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Science, Science Blogs, Superbug Tagged With: animals, antibiotics, cephalosporins, E. coli, food, food policy, food safety, poultry, Resistance, Science Blogs

News Round-Up: Food, Foodborne Illness, And Antibiotic Resistance In Food

May 5, 2013 By Maryn Leave a Comment

OK, still catching up. Today: food, foodborne illness, and antibiotic use and resistance in food — lots of news in a multi-item rundown. (Under normal circumstances, I’d give each of these items a post of its own; but since they all happened in the past few weeks, it seems better to note them and move on.)

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Science, Science Blogs, Superbug Tagged With: antibiotics, CDC, consumer reports, E. coli, EIS, food, food policy, foodborne, Resistance, salmonella, Science Blogs, Turkey

The Persistence of Resistance And Some Reasons Why

November 13, 2012 By Maryn Leave a Comment

Tuesday marked the start of the United States’ Get Smart About Antibiotics Week, an annual observance by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that tries to direct attention to the root causes of antibiotic resistance and possible fixes. (It is also European Antibiotic Awareness Day, and also the first day of Australia’s Antibiotic Awareness Week. I don’t know of other national observances; if you do, leave them in the comments!)

To mark the day and jump-start awareness, the CDC and a number of US medical and public-health organizations held press events. The observances and the policy statements that came from them were important — but reading between the lines, it is discouraging how much there is yet to do.

(By the way, constant readers: Sorry to be gone so long. Some challenges in the extended family of Casa Superbug; almost all better now, hope everything will be over by the weekend. Meanwhile…)
[Read more…]

Filed Under: Science, Science Blogs, Superbug Tagged With: antibiotics, CDC, E. coli, Resistance, Science Blogs

Drug Resistance in Food: Chicken, Shrimp, Even Lettuce (ICAAC 4)

September 13, 2012 By Maryn Leave a Comment

A final post from the ICAAC meeting, which concluded at one end of the Moscone Center in San Francisco Wednesday just as the Apple iPhone 5 launch was beginning at the building’s other end. (Definitely a crossing of geek streams.)

There’s far too much going on at a meeting like this to cover everything. So what emerges, as journalists move around the session rooms and exhibit floors, are stories regarding whatever caught a reporter’s eye based on his or her existing interests and news sense.

What caught my eye was a lot of research into foodborne illness, and particularly into the possibility of food being a reservoir for antibiotic resistance (which, constant readers will know, is something I’m interested in). [Read more…]

Filed Under: Science, Science Blogs, Superbug Tagged With: antibiotics, cephalosporins, E. coli, food, food policy, ICAAC, salmonella, Science Blogs

"Superbug" NDM-1 Found In US Cat (ICAAC 3)

September 12, 2012 By Maryn Leave a Comment

News from the ICAAC meeting: The “Indian superbug” NDM-1 — actually a gene which encodes an enzyme which confers resistance to almost all known antibiotics — has been found for the first time in a pet, somewhere in the United States.

When you consider the close contact we have with our pets — letting them lick us, smooching them on the head, allowing them to sleep on the bed — you’ll understand why this could be such bad news. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Science, Science Blogs, Superbug Tagged With: E. coli, ICAAC, Klebsiella, NDM-1, pets, Science Blogs

E. Coli Behaving Badly: Hospitals, Travel, Food (ICAAC 2)

September 11, 2012 By Maryn Leave a Comment

A quicker post today from the ICAAC meeting because there’s lots of news coming down this afternoon. At a conference like this, where the focus is on new behavior of pathogens and new drug compounds to contain them, there is a natural focus on emerging antibiotic resistance. Out of the first two days of (hundreds of) papers and posters, here are just a few unnerving reports.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Science, Science Blogs, Superbug Tagged With: antibiotics, E. coli, food, food policy, ICAAC, Resistance, Science Blogs

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