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Scientists have warned of an alarming rise in “extremely pathogenic” multidrug-resistant bacteria in the war-torn Ukraine.
The researchers tested samples from 150 war wounded and found several species bacteria resistant to broad-spectrum antibioticswith six percent resistant to all antibiotics tested.
They narrowed down to bacterial samples Klebsiella pneumoniae to assess whether it has the ability to cause disease in a wider context.
Klebsiella causes a range of diseases such as pneumonia and urinary tract, skin and wound infections, and is responsible for about a fifth of all deaths attributed to drug resistance. superbugs.
Scientists evaluated samples from 37 patients known to have drug-resistant bacteria and sequenced the bug’s genome. “It turns out that all the bacteria carry genes that we know are associated with resistance,” said Kristian Riesbeck, author of the study. “We saw that one quarter of them were resistant to all available antimicrobial drugs on the market. These bacteria are said to have total resistance.”
Such superbugs show an extreme shape resistance to antibiotics and represent “a growing health concern,” the scientists noted.
Researchers, including Sweden’s Lund University, have warned that infections caused by these bacteria can be “very difficult” to treat.
One of the reasons Klebsiella infections are difficult to treat is that they produce an “extraordinary” amount of mucus, Dr. Riesbeck said. Science magazine.
In some cases, he said, it can be “impossible to treat with the drugs we have today.”
The scientists also evaluated whether bacteria taken from patients in Ukraine could further spread the infection in an experiment conducted on mice and insect larvae.
“The types of bacteria that were most resistant to antibiotics were also the ones that survived best in the mice associated with pneumonia,” they said.
“Similarly, these types of bacteria were so aggressive that they killed insect larvae much faster than bacteria that were less resistant to antibiotics.”
They found that all the Klebsiella bacteria with total resistance that they investigated carried genes that made them more virulent.
“Maybe we underestimated the bacteria. We saw that many of these types of bacteria from Ukraine are equipped with genes that make them both resistant and virulent,” said Dr. Riesbeck.
“Even though pan-drug-resistant bacteria struggle to survive our antibiotic treatment, they still have the complete set of genes that make them capable of causing disease. This is surprising to all of us and unfortunately a worrying sign for the future.”
Such bacteria spreading among the wounded in Ukraine will most likely continue to survive and cause problems, the researchers warned.
“Alarmingly, our findings show that victims of the war in Ukraine are affected by multidrug-resistant and hypervirulent K pneumoniae” they wrote.
“This is something that will not go away with time. Until patients can be isolated and properly treated, the spread of infection will continue.”