Super microbes and bacteria with superpowers: the scariest discoveries of 2019

From diseases caused by antibiotic-resistant microorganisms, up to 700 thousand people die every year. By the middle of the century, this figure could rise to ten million, note UN experts. Writes about this RIA News".

Фото: Depositphotos

Attempts to strictly regulate the sale of antimicrobials and limit their use in agriculture have not yet brought effect. Superbacteria are rapidly spreading around the world, and scientists are discovering new microorganisms against which even antibiotics of the last reserve are powerless. What dangers threaten humanity in 2020?

Arctic antibiotic insensitivity

In February 2019, British, American and Chinese researchers found bacteria found in the Arctic have the blaNDM-1 antibiotic resistance gene. Microbes that have it in their DNA are immune to almost all beta-lactams - the most numerous and common group of antibiotics.

For the first time blaNDM-1 was described in 2008 under clinical conditions, in 2010 it was found in India. According to the authors, after five years, he reached a remote area of ​​Western Svalbard, probably with migratory birds wintering in the British Isles, or people. According to the microflora of the archipelago, the dangerous gene was most likely carried by Arctic foxes who like to delve into the garbage near settlements.

Scientists took soil samples in the area of ​​Kongsfjorden Bay, isolated microbial DNA and have revealed 131 gene of antibiotic resistance (resistance to antibiotics). Thirty-nine were qualified as autochthonous, that is, local, only under stressful conditions (for example, with a high content of heavy metals in the soil). But the rest, apparently, are imported, including blaNDM-1.

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The authors of the work did not expect that the antibiotic resistance genes would spread so rapidly.

Lightning exchange of dangerous genes

Around the same time, German, Danish and Brazilian microbiologists proposed a possible explanation for such a rapid increase in the number of microorganisms that are resistant to several antibiotic groups at once.

For 34 days, Piaractus mesopotamicus fish grown under aquaculture were fed with the antibiotic florfenicol. Then they took samples of intestinal bacteria from the digestive tract of animals. As expected, almost all microorganisms contained genes that allowed them to resist florfenicol. But it turned out that the bacteria exchange useful genes with each other, not using plasmids - DNA molecules isolated from chromosomes, as previously thought, but through viruses and mobile genetic elements (the so-called jumping genes).

Researchers note that this discovery should seriously adjust the distribution patterns of antibiotic resistance genes. Most likely, bacterial antimicrobial resistance is transmitted much faster.

African bacteria with superpowers

In September 2019 in the Republic of Congo have opened a new supermicrobe - non-typhoid salmonella, which is characterized by increased resistance to antibiotics. Against this option, the bacteria are powerless ceftriaxone and cephalosporin - second-line antimicrobial drugs, usually recommended for the treatment of severe intestinal infections. Salmonella was also insensitive to azithromycin.

In addition, scientists have found that this strain has lost the ability to form biofilms and survive on various nutrient media. In other words, he adapted to the human body. There was no gene encoding the bacterial flagellum protein in his DNA. Usually, human immune cells respond specifically to him, which means that now it is more difficult for Salmonella to detect and destroy.

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Researchers suggest that the super-resistant Salmonella appeared in the Congo no later than 2004 and has already managed to spread in at least three cities in the country.

New supermicrobe in the heart of Europe

In October, French scientists сообщилиthat with one of the strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa (Pseudomonas aeruginosa) the combined antibiotic ceftolosan-tazobactam failed. This is one of the drugs of the last reserve in the treatment of severe gram-negative nosocomial infections. It can cause serious side effects, so it is used only in extreme cases, when other drugs do not help.

A supermicrobe was found in a French child who underwent surgery on the liver twice and for two years suffered from a recurring infection caused by Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Doctors have prescribed ceftolosan tazobactam. And after 22 days in the patient’s body found a Pseudomonas aeruginosa, insensitive to antibiotics.

After studying the genomes of several dozen of its samples, scientists found that antibiotic resistance is the result of a single mutation in the gene that encodes the cephalosporinase enzyme.

They fought the disease for 2,5 years. It turned out that, gaining insensitivity to the antibiotic, Pseudomonas aeruginosa lost protection from other drugs. So, it is quite likely to defeat some superbacteria with the help of older drugs, the authors of the work note.

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