DOCTORS are losing the battle to control the rapid spread of drug-resistant "superbugs," a local microbiologist warns.
Dr. George Zhanel, chairman of Winnipeg-based Canadian Antibiotic Resistance Alliance, said the results of the spread could be extremely serious. For example, a mild skin infection like a boil could lead to a fatal lung infection if traditional antibiotics can't stop the spread of bacteria.
Dr. George Zhanel warns that a mild skin infection like a boil could lead to a fatal lung infection if traditional antibiotics can’t stop the spread of bacteria.
He said the spread of superbugs in the community has been particularly accelerated in the past five years.
"We try to stay a step ahead, but we're losing," he said, noting some of these superbugs didn't exist a few years ago.
"These things are going to get more and more vicious at causing disease."
He said the situation calls for doctors and patients to be especially vigilant in avoiding unnecessary antibiotics.
Resisting
Zhanel and his colleagues are studying the genetics of superbugs and how they are able to resist up to five classes of different antibiotics -- including penicillin, streptomycin and erythromycin. He'll discuss some of his findings at a public lecture, called Superbugs: Are we Doomed?, at the University of Manitoba Tuesday night.
While researchers first believed bacteria were only passing drug-resistant genes to their immediate offspring, Zhanel said new DNA studies are proving bacteria have figured out how to "one-up" both antibiotics and the body's immune system.
Superbugs carry a cluster of genetic codes to resist antibiotics, and can freely make copies of these codes to share with all of the body's bacteria. Zhanel said that means a drug-resistant skin infection can quickly spread to other parts of the body, including the lungs and the blood.
He's seen it happen in young athletes -- notably football players, hockey players and wrestlers -- because of the close skin-to-skin contact associated with the sport.
"Now it's moved and it's causing blood infections and lung infections and it is very able to cause these infections in young, healthy individuals," he said. "It can bring them down and kill them very quickly."
Zhanel said doctors over-prescribing antibiotics to patients who demand them are making the problem worse, and hospital physicians still have no quick way of identifying a superbug in a patient. Lab tests can take several days, and the technology to identify a superbug using a patient's DNA is still a decade or more away.
Doctors are scrambling to use combinations of various antibiotics to treat superbug infections, but Zhanel said unless new medications are available this will likely stop working, too, in a few short years.
"We don't have a clue what's going on, we just try an antibiotic and say 'I hope this one works,' " Zhanel said.
Superbugs develop resistance when patients take too many antibiotics when they don't need them. Antibiotics only work properly when they're used for a bacterial infection and do not kill viruses, like the common cold or flu.
Although antibiotics will kill an infection, Zhanel said they also destroy the body's natural healthy bacteria, or "flora" in the process. The drugs don't know you're aiming at a skin infection in your leg and, because they are absorbed into the bloodstream and the body's tissue, they will also kill healthy flora on the skin, and in the mouth, throat, and digestive tract.
Zhanel said that leaves an open invitation for drug-resistant bacteria to enter the body.
One of the most common drug-resistant bacteria is methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA.
In 2005, there were 1,170 reported cases of MRSA in Manitoba. As of November 2006, there were 1,562.
While the superbug was initially passed between patients in hospitals, Zhanel said nearly 10 per cent of all MRSA infections are now acquired in the community. This means it won't take long before the bug is spread between schools, workplaces and anywhere where people have close contact or shake hands.
Zhanel said the superbug has already become a big problem among Manitoba's aboriginal population on reserves and IV drug users, since poor housing and close skin-to-skin contact are prime breeding conditions for the bacteria.
Zhanel said it's important the public takes note of the emerging health threat and makes a conscious effort to avoid antibiotics and practise proper handwashing.
Zhanel's lecture Tuesday is free, and starts at 7 p.m. at 135 Innovation Drive.
jen.skerritt@freepress.mb.ca
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