Two years ago, Chinese researchers discovered a gene that makes intestinal bacteria immune to the reserve antibiotic colistin. The gene has now also been detected in Germany. What is particularly explosive is that the gene easily jumps to other bacterial strains. This means there is a risk of superbugs that no antibiotic can combat.
Reserve antibiotics usually have serious side effects. They are only used when better tolerated drugs have failed. But then they are the last hope. It is all the more dangerous when pathogens become resistant to a reserve antibiotic.
Not only animals affected
In 2015, researchers in China discovered intestinal bacteria that were immune to the reserve antibiotic colistin during studies on pigs. The resistance is caused by a gene called MCR-1, which changes the shell of the bacterial cells in such a way that the antibiotic can no longer dock onto them.
The discovery of colistin resistance in farm animals is not surprising, especially since colistin is very widely used in veterinary medicine - unlike in human medicine. In Germany alone, veterinarians purchased almost 70 tons of the antibiotic in 2016. What is surprising, however, is that the resistance gene has also been found in humans. The Chinese scientists were able to detect MCR-1 in 16 of the 1,322 hospital samples they analyzed.
danger of superbugs
This is by no means a purely Chinese problem. A team of researchers from the University of Giessen and the German Center for Infection Research found the gene in a German patient sample. The researchers made another worrying discovery: the MCR-1 gene spreads much more easily between different types of bacteria than previously thought.
This allows pathogens that are already resistant to various antibiotics to build up additional immunity to colistin. This has already happened. In addition to colistin resistance, the Giessen sample also found immunity to carbapenems. This is worrying because colistin is the last treatment option when carbapenems, which are also reserve antibiotics, do not work.
In healthy people, bacteria that carry the MCR-1 gene - these are usually harmless intestinal bacteria - are not normally dangerous. They only become dangerous when they get into organs where they have no business being and cause an infection there. Paradoxically, non-specific antibiotic treatment can also be dangerous: the drugs kill non-resistant pathogens, which means that the resistant germs can multiply more easily and become a threat.
Government wants to curb antibiotic use
In 2015, the German government adopted a strategy to combat antibiotic resistance. It aims to reduce the use of antibiotics - in human medicine as well as in veterinary medicine. It is also promoting the development of new antibiotics. Hygiene in the healthcare system is also to be improved. After all, between 10,000 and 15,000 people die every year from hospital infections.
In veterinary medicine, efforts to limit the use of antibiotics are having an effect. From 2011 to 2016, the amount dispensed fell by 56.5 percent, from 1,706 to 742 tons. In the same period, antibiotic use in human medicine increased by 4.3 percent to 368 million defined daily doses. The development of new drugs is also slow. According to the Association of Research-Based Pharmaceutical Manufacturers, just six new antibiotics have come onto the market since 2011, designed to eradicate problem germs.
