A gene that protects bacteria against the last-resort antibiotics used against disease in humans “has been found in the United States for the first time — in a person and, separately, in a stored sample taken from a slaughtered pig,” writes Maryn McKenna at National Geographic’s Germination Blog. Defense Department researchers say in a scientific journal the discovery “heralds the emergence of truly pan-drug resistant bacteria.”
The researchers said a woman undergoing treatment at a military-associated clinic in Pennsylvania last month had a strain of E coli that was resistant to a wide range of antimicrobials. “That turned out to be because the organism carried 15 different genes conferring antibiotic resistance, clustered on two “mobile elements” that can move easily among bacteria. One element included the new, dreaded gene MCR-1,” said the Geographic. (McKenna wrote about the widespread impact of the end of antibiotics in a piece for FERN and Medium).
The HHS confirmed discovery of MCR-1 in a sample of pig intestine that was taken as part of a surveillance system for antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
Dr. Beth Bell, director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told McKenna: ““It is extremely concerning; this is potentially a sentinel event.” He added that the USDA will shortly announce the first identification of MCR in the United States in an animal.
MCR-1 was reported for the first time last November by researchers who found the gene in people, animals and meat in several areas of China. “Subsequently it has been found in people, animals or meat in at least 20 countries across the world. MCR is so troubling because it confers protection against colistin, the last remaining antibiotic that works against a broad family of bacteria that have already acquired resistance to all the other antibiotics used against them,” McKenna writes.