An obscure strain of a deadly “nightmare” superbug appears to be on the rise in the U.S., according to the federal government.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a new study Thursday offering the first definitive account of U.S. cases of a strain of carbapenem-resistant enterobacteriaceae (CRE), which is commonly referred to as “nightmare bacteria.” The study comes as the agency is pushing for more funds from Congress to attack superbugs.
“It is not too late, but it will be soon if we don’t act now,” CDC Director Tom Frieden told the Washington Examiner on Thursday.
The agency said it identified 52 cases of a strain of CRE in 43 patients in 19 states from June 2010 to August 2015. The strain is found primarily in hospitals and has a high mortality rate.
The strain is different from regular CRE in that it spreads quickly and can spread a gene that is resistant to antibiotics to other types of bacteria. For instance, the CRE strain can make other bacteria such as E. coli more resistant to antibiotics, Frieden said.
“This resistance gene isn’t picked up by some of the tests for resistant bacteria,” he added.
Frieden believes the cases identified in the study were “just the tip of the iceberg.”
“Those are the only ones that people know of,” said Alex Kallen, a CDC medical officer and senior author of the study.
While the strain was first identified in 2001 in Turkey, the agency didn’t start testing for it until 2008 to 2009, Kallen said. The agency receives samples of unknown pathogens from health officials around the country.
Kallen suspects that the cases of the CRE strain are increasing, mainly because scientists are seeing more widespread transmission. Some of the cases appear to stem from people who traveled to other countries, primarily India, and got infected, the CDC said.
Among the 29 patients who had a travel history available, 19 traveled internationally before the CRE sample was collected and 16 were hospitalized outside the U.S., the study said.
Kallen emphasized that the only way to get infected with the bacteria is in a hospital or other healthcare facility.
“It is pretty rare right now,” he said. “We don’t see these strains circulating in the community.”
Of the 43 patients, the age was available for 35 of them. The median age was 70 years.
The CDC says doctors and other healthcare officials need to be on the lookout for the CRE strain.
“It is low, emerging and this is the time to intervene when these are rare,” Kallen said.
Superbugs have become a big healthcare concern for the CDC and other agencies. They have prompted new measures to curb antibiotic prescribing by doctors and to limit the use of antibiotics in livestock, which can become resistant and pass that resistance on to humans when consumed.
Frieden is pushing lawmakers to devote more funding for fighting superbugs, saying that President Obama’s budget included $264 million dedicated to the fight.
He said the money would be used to track and detect drug-resistant bacteria all over the country and find and stop outbreaks, and find ways to work with hospitals to make them safer.
Frieden added that over the past few months the agency is seeing new, resistant mechanisms that can take on the last bastion of antibiotics that can still fight off infections.
He referred to a study in China that discovered genes in bacteria resistant to an older and more toxic antibiotic that had worked against some CRE strains.
“What we are seeing is an assault by microbes on our last and best antibiotics,” he said. “We are essentially hanging by a thread with the most powerful antibiotics we’ve got.”
