NDM-1 (Superflu) Commentary

The following are excerpts from various articles posted here in the past 24 hours.

Common symptoms: Urinary tract infections, blood infections, diarrhea

E. Coli: NDM-1 gene has been found inside the E. Coli bacteria.

Klebsiella Pneumoniae: Known as a bacteria hosting NDM-1

The majority of the patients treated to date who are positive for NDM-1 were those with urinary tract infections, bacteremia, or pneumonia.

The Lancet Infectious Diseases: The potential of NDM-1 to be a worldwide public health problem is great, and co-ordinated international surveillance is needed.


CDC:
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said Tuesday that it is planning to list a new superbug NDM-1 as a communicable disease...
The CDC advises any hospitals that find such cases to put the patient in medical isolation, check the patient's close contacts for possible infection, and look for more infections in the hospital. Any case "should raise an alarm," Limbago said.

KPC (carbapenem-resistant carbapenemase):
Dr. Alexander J. Kallen, a medical epidemiologist and outbreak response coordinator with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion: In the United States, carbapenem-resistant bacteria -- designated carbapenem-resistant carbapenemase (KPC) -- are usually transmitted in health-care facilities such as hospitals and nursing homes, and are typically spread from patient to patient from contaminated surfaces and hands, he said.
How dangerous NDM-1 will become isn't known, Kallen said. But some studies have found the death rate from KPC [the North American bacterium] to be as high as 40 percent, he said.



U.S.A.
The American cases occurred in 2010 in people from California, Massachusetts, and Illinois, said Brandi Limbago, a lab chief at the CDC.
3 different bacteria were involved, and different mechanisms let the gene become part of them.
The American patients were not related.
The California woman needed hospital care after being in a car accident in India.
The Illinois man had pre-existing medical problems and a urinary catheter, and is thought to have contracted an infection with the gene while traveling in India.
The case from Massachusetts involved a woman from India who had surgery and chemotherapy for cancer there and then traveled to the USA.

Japan:
Thursday (September 9), Taiwan declared that NDM-1 had been classified as a category-four communicable disease, Tamil News Network (TNN) said. A category four means that hospitals and clinics will have to immediately report any suspected cases.

Shuhei Fujimoto, a professor at Tokai University's Department of Bacteriology and Bacterial Infection: ""Although the battle with multidrug-resistant bacteria has long been buttressed by developments of new antibiotics, we are in a critical situation at present,"...
E. coli with the gene to produce the NDM-1 enzyme that makes bacteria resistant to most antibiotics was reported for the first time in Japan last week.
Japan has confirmed another 5 cases of infection with _Acinetobacter_, an antibiotic-resistant bacterium, carrying what is formally know as "New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase-1 enzyme (NDM-1)".

The cases from Teikyo University Hospital have brought the total number of people infected with the bug to 58 in the country. Of the 58 people, 32 have died,
including 9 whose deaths were likely caused directly by the infection, the Xinhua news agency reports.


China:
China's Ministry of Health has established a monitoring network nationwide for NDM-1 (New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase), which is code for an enzyme that makes bacteria resistant to antibiotics, and selected 19 hospitals in major cities such as Beijing and Shanghai as sentinel hospitals in order to cope with potential threats, reporters learned on Sept. 14.

Thailand has not revealed cases of HIV "super bug ND M

Reported that, at present, Britain has more than 70 people infected with the NDM-1 "super bacteria", the number of infections in India and Pakistan and more than 170 people.

Canada also appears 2 infection "superbugs" cases...
One case was in Alberta, the other in British Columbia. Both patients had medical emergencies while traveling in India.

Although only 50 cases have been noted in the United Kingdom...The Department of Health in the UK, on the advice of the Health Protection Agency, has issued a National Resistance Alert 3 notice.

Australia
Dr M Lindsay Grayson, director of infectious diseases at the University of Melbourne in Australia. "It's just a matter of time" until the gene spreads more widely person-to-person, he said.