![]() The outbreak was identified in January 2011 and was over by February 2012.ĭuring that time two patients came into the hospital with different strains of NDM-1 Klebsiella pneumoniae. Simor’s study describes an outbreak at Toronto’s Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, where he is head of microbiology. The researchers who investigated the outbreak were not able to determine where the bacteria had been acquired. None of the patients in the outbreak had travelled to or been hospitalized in countries where NDM-1 is endemic. Molecular study of the bacteria from all five showed they were linked. The Brampton outbreak involved five patients, all carrying Klebsiella pneumoniae. “Everywhere you turn there is bad news,” McGeer says of NDM-1 and a handful of similar enzymes that confer resistance to drugs in the beta-lactam class of antibiotics. ![]() It occurred at William Osler Health System in Brampton, northeast of Toronto, and was first spotted in October 2011. The article is the first describing a hospital outbreak involving NDM-1 organisms in Canada. coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae bacteria that contained NDM-1, leaving the authors to conclude the enzyme passed from one bug to the other in the patient.Īllison McGeer, the head of infection control at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital, is an author of that paper, which appeared in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases. One patient described in one of these studies had both E. It’s an enzyme produced by some bacteria which disables an alarming array of antibiotics ![]() This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Perhaps more upsetting is the fact that the gene responsible for making the enzyme is promiscuous - it is able to move from one bacteria to another, conferring on each a level of drug resistance that leaves doctors with few treatment options. And NDM-1 positive bacteria become resistant to colistin over time, Simor says. One, colistin, is highly toxic doctors do not use it if they have an option. The few drugs that do treat NDM-1 positive bacteria are antibiotics that are rarely used. It’s an enzyme produced by some bacteria which disables an alarming array of antibiotics. And with increasing use of the drugs in the second half of the 20th century, the resistant bacteria flourished, leaving the pharmaceutical industry scrambling to try to stay ahead of the bugs.īut NDM-1 isn’t a bacterium. NDM-1 positive bacteria were first found in Canada in 2010.ĭrug resistant bacteria have been around as long as there have been antibiotics. ‘For many years the term superbug has been thrown around … I think we’re actually seriously now approaching that point’ The discovery, reported in the journal Lancet, rang alarm bells the world over because of it represented a new mechanism of drug resistance. ![]() The NDM-1 enzyme - the ND stands for New Delhi - was first found in 2008 in a Swedish person who had travelled to India for medical treatment. “I think we’re actually seriously now approaching that point with these NDM-1s.” Manage Print Subscription / Tax Receipt. ![]()
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