Health experts come together today (Thursday) to warn that a new form of superbug that gives bacteria the power to resist virtually all known antibiotics is spreading quickly, posing a global health disaster. It is called New Delhi metallobeta-lactamase, or NDM-1 for short. This enzyme destroys carbapenems, an important group of antibiotics used for difficult infections in hospitals, and has been found in a wide variety of bacterial types. British researchers last August reported that infections involving NDM-1 had been found in patients in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Britain.
This new study published Thursday in the U.K. medical publication The Lancet shows NDM-1 is widespread outside the hospital environment in Delhi, India and circulating in bacteria than inhabit drains and tap water, due to sewage contamination. The World Health Organization Thursday issued a plea for collective action to fight emerging new superbugs like the NDM-1, warning that the threat is spreading fast. Experts say the danger is acute because the pipeline of new antibiotics is essentially empty.
David Livermore, director of antibiotic resistance monitoring at the U.K.'s Health Protection Agency said in a statement, “So much of modern medicine--from gut surgery to cancer treatment, to transplants--depends on our ability to treat infection. If resistance destroys that ability then the whole edifice of modern medicine crumbles.” Over the past three decades only two new classes of antibacterial medicines have been discovered, compared to 11 in the previous 50 years. AstraZeneca PLC (AZN) Chief Executive David Brennan said in a prepared address Thursday for The WHO World Health Day, marking the founding of the Geneva-based body, “We have to recognize that even if we can increase these numbers, the task will never be complete because our most recently approved and most effective drugs will gradually decline in efficacy and we will need to develop new antibiotics to replace them.”
Antibiotics lose their effectiveness over time, as bacteria naturally evolve and mutate, becoming resistant. And resistance is a truly global problem. In the U.S., hospital-acquired, drug-resistant bacterial infections kill 63,000 patients each year and cost $34 billion. In the E.U., multi-drug-resistant bacteria cause about 400,000 infections a year and at least 25,000 deaths, and generate costs of EUR1.5 billion, industry figures show.
“If leaders in government, science, economics, public policy, intellectual property and philanthropy can come together, we will maximize the opportunities to develop and implement the creative solutions that will truly make a difference to tackling anti-microbial resistance,” Brennan said.
“Antibiotics are a precious discovery, but we take them for granted, overuse and misuse them,” said Zsuzsanna Jakab, WHO director for Europe. “There are now superbugs that do not respond to any drug…We need to raise the alert that we are at a critical point in time where antibiotic resistance is reaching unprecedented levels, and new antibiotics are not going to arrive quickly enough.”
The UN health agency is highlighting the problem on the occasion of this year's World Health Day. It wants governments, but also civil society and the pharmaceutical industry to come up with strategies to deal with drug resistance.
International research collaboration leads to breakthrough in antibiotic resistance testing using DNA sequencing