More bugs

©  2009  Rose George

Further to the University of Warwick research that I wrote about recently, more sobering science about how our wastewater treatment paradigm acts as a training ground for antibiotics-resistant bugs to get more antibiotics-resistant. The research, published in Science of the Total Environment in March, and summarized by Environmental Health News, found that antibiotics in wastewater – that’s 90% of antibiotics ingested, according to lead author Chuanwu Xi of the University of Michigan, as “they’re pretty stable – help bacteria learn to resist them. Antiobiotic resistance is already a CDC priority. But research, despite these two studies, is relatively scanty. MRSA is the best-known antiobiotic resistant “superbug”, but it now has a rival, according to the Infectious Disease Society of America. In January, Environmental Health News reports, the Society “said that a particular strain, Acinetobacter baumannii, along with other microbes called Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Klebsiella pneumoniae, could soon rival MRSA as a killer.  It has also become notorious as a common infector and occasional killer of soldiers and veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.” A “pressing public health problem” indeed.