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Mutant ninja bacteria

Natural History, Nov, 2001 by Maria Ribaudo

Drug-resistant bacteria--a worldwide problem resulting from the indiscriminate use of antibiotics--are particularly threatening in developing countries. Overuse of antibiotics has been shown to drive the evolution of mutant strains of bacteria immune to a broad spectrum of drugs, including penicillins, cephalosporins, and quinolones. Now scientists have found that these multiple-drug-resistant, or MDR, bacteria can find their way from an infected hospital patient's digestive system into hospital effluent and thence into community sewage systems.

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V. Chitnis, of Choithram Hospital and Research Centre in Indore, India, and colleagues compared the bacterial concentration in the runoff from ten hospitals with that in sewage from eleven residential areas. They found that although effluent in Indore's residential areas had a higher overall bacterial count (which the team attributes to a Lower concentration of disinfectants and antibiotics than is found in hospital runoff), the proportion of MDR bacteria in hospital samples was significantly higher. What's more, higher concentrations of resistant bacteria were detected, in some cases, more than a mile from the point where the hospital effluent had entered the municipal sewage system.

These MDR bacteria are able to proliferate because resistance plasmids--genetic elements found in bacterial cytoplasm--can be transferred from one bacterium to another by cell-to-cell contact. The result is that bacteria that have never been exposed to antibiotics can become resistant simply by coming into contact with MDR bacteria. If such resistance is transferred to any of the bacterial pathogens causing infections (such as cholera and dysentery) that are common outside the hospital setting, the researchers caution, "most of the presently available antibiotics will be futile against the infectious organisms." ("Hospital Effluent: A Source of Multiple-Drug-Resistant Bacteria," Current Science 79, 2000)

Mutant ninja bacteria

Natural History, Nov, 2001 by Maria Ribaudo

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