Georgetown investigators say bacterial resistance in Asia has overcome even superbug antibiotic

In a study published in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents, a scientific team reported that continued resistance to two critical antibiotic types that are still widely distributed in Southeast Asia is raising the risk of untreatable infections.

Carbapenems and polymyxins are being resisted in numerous Southeast Asian nations, scientists from Georgetown University Medical Center said. Polymyxin is meant to be the absolute last line of defense against so-called superbugs, but now even it is vulnerable, as resistance to drugs like colistin — a type of polymyxin — grows in bacteria like E. coli and Klebsiella.

Drug resistance has already been labeled a critical threat by the World Health Organization (WHO) and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), but scientific and clinical data now shows just how much. And the reason may be due to generic use. Dr. Jesse Goodman, the study’s senior investigator as well as a professor of medicine and director of Georgetown’s Center on Medical Product Access, Safety and Stewardship, said that the resistance can likely be linked — at least in part — to use of drugs in food animal production.

“The picture the data paints is of a serious emerging public health threat,” Goodman said. “We document that resistance to each drug is geographically widespread in the region, including many areas where the distribution of strains resistant to each type of antibiotic overlaps.”

Resistant bacteria can spread this resistance through their genes, transmitting to other bacteria what scientists have termed “mobile genetic elements.” On the whole, this has led Goodman and his team to caution that organisms could, potentially, gain resistance to both types of drugs, rendering infections potentially untreatable. To counter it, they have urged greater antimicrobial resistance surveillance, prevention, treatment, and control.