More than ever, health experts are urging both doctors and patients to be more accurate in dispensing and consuming antibiotics especially since there's a possible menacing threat lurking.
It's called carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae or CRE. Based on the name, the bacteria, which come from the Enterobacteriaceae group, are immune to a class of broad-spectrum drug called carbapenem. Usually given to patients who are in the hospitals, these drugs are used to eliminate bacteria that have grown resistant to a number of antibiotics.
The CRE, however, is able to resist carpabenems by producing certain enzymes that only break down the drug before it can even penetrate the bacteria. What makes them even stronger is the presence of plasmid, a DNA molecule that can contain the same enzyme, which can then be passed on to another type of bacteria, turning them into drug resistant as well.
So far, in the United States, at least 40 people have already contracted a CRE-type infection in no more than six years, based on the report of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released on Thursday, Dec 3. Most of these patients have traveled outside the country like in India prior to the illness. Incidentally, India has one of the worst cases of antibiotic resistance with many people getting sick of Klebsiella pneumoniae, which is now resistant to carpabenem.
In China, some patients have already become resistant to Colistin, which is the last-resort drug for multi-resistant bacteria, mainly due to plasmid.
Although the status implies that this is not yet a threat to public health, the health experts are worried that if CRE would gain traction in the United States, they can contribute to a global outbreak that would spread fast and be very difficult to treat and contain. Currently, scientists are obtaining information and working as much as they can to prevent that from happening.