For me the following story (just released) unlies the importance of Microcide's two bacterial resistance programs, and it's future investment potential. I suspect this may have accounted for the nice move today.
Germ Might Become Unstoppable
DALLAS (AP) -- The bacterium responsible for most hospital-related infections is close to becoming unstoppable, scientists say.
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scientists confirmed that Staphylococcus aureus, also known as a staph infection, has for the first time defended itself from vancomycin, the last drug that can kill all its strains, The Dallas Morning News reported in a copyright story today.
The newly discovered strain, found in Japan, demonstrated an "intermediate" level of resistance to the antibiotic. That's higher than any level previously known for staph.
"We have a situation which is very worrisome," said Fred Tenover,
a microbiologist and laboratory chief of the CDC's hospital infections branch. "If we're climbing the ladder, we're almost to the roof."
It's the first time the possibility of an unstoppable infection has
surfaced since penicillin became widely used in the 1940s.
Staphylococcus aureus usually lives peacefully within the human body, but becomes dangerous when it slips through an open wound or sore. It's known for causing hospital infections, boils and pimples. Before antibiotics came along, however, a staph-related boil, for example, could have been fatal.
The newly discovered strain was found in a Japanese infant who developed the infection after heart surgery, Tenover said. Other drugs aided the boy's recovery, but doctors found that a staph-infected abscess seemed to have some ability to resist the drug vancomycin. Samples of the bacterium were sent to the CDC for examination.
Vancomycin has been used for 30 years for stubborn strains of staph and other bacteria. Doctors thought that staph might not be able to build a tolerance to it, said Dr. Robert Haley of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.
"Vancomycin has been a silver bullet for staph," Haley said.
Penicillin successfully controlled staph infection in the 1940s, but by
the 1950s almost half of all staph strains had developed a resistance. In the 1960s, scientists developed an antibiotic called methicillin, but by the late 1970s methicillin-resistant staph had become a growing problem.
Tenover said the vancomycin-resistant staph could mean a repeat of problems with vancomycin-resistant enterococci, another hospital infection that became a worldwide nuisance once it developed a resistance to the antibiotic. Before that, enterococci had not been considered a serious menace.
"Once it showed up, it spread like fire in a lot of U.S. hospitals,"
Tenover said.
Scientists and public health experts should develop a plan for diligent infection control, said Dr. Michael Edmond of the Medical College of Virginia, who published a strategy last year for controlling a vancomycin-resistant strain of staph.
"Just because it's in Japan doesn't mean anything," Edmond said.
"Whenever we talk about the problem of antibiotic resistance, it's a
global problem."
The CDC is drafting new guidelines to deal with possible vancomycin- resistant staph strains, Tenover said. The guidelines are to be published in the CDC's "Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report" this summer. A discussion of the Japanese patient is expected to appear in the July issue of the "Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy."
News or information from AP may not be published, broadcast or
redistributed without the prior authorization of AP.
c Copyright 1997 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. |
