- WASHINGTON (AFP) - A lethal
bacteria which surfaces in people being treated with antibiotics is spreading
in North America and has grown resistant to drugs, according to two studies
published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
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- According to one of the studies, a new, virulent and
resistant strain of the bacteria Clostridium difficile broke out in eight
US hospital centers between 2000 and 2003.
-
- Provoked by antibiotics inside the intestines of hospital
patients, the bacteria showed an ability to mutate and increase its resistance
to drugs, the report said.
-
- Moreover, the bacteria, which infects the colon causing
severe diarrhea and colitis, a severe inflammation of the intestine, has
begun showing up in patients not taking antibiotics or visiting hospitals.
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- Symptoms include watery, malodorous diarrhea and cramps.
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- A second study of 1,703 patients in 12 hospitals in Quebec,
Canada, demonstrated the lethality of the bacteria.
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- Over 13 years the incidence of the bacteria grew fourfold
in Quebec, and in 2004 it caused the deaths of 117 people in the first
month after they were diagnosed. All of the victims were elderly.
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- "Hospitals need to be conducting surveillance and
implementing control measures. And all of us need to realize the risk of
antibiotic use may be increasing," warned epidemiologist Clifford
McDonald of the US Centers for Disiease Control.
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- Scientists were concerned that Clostridium difficile
-- so-named because of the difficulty in detecting it -- had become very
resistant to fluoroquinolone antibiotics usually used to treat such infections.
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- "If this epidemic strain continues to spread (...)
it will be important either to reconsider the use of fluoroquinolones or
to develop other innovative measures for controlling C. difficile-associated
disease," said McDonald.
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