Indestructible superbugs

The list of drug-resistant diseases is expanding. US epidemiological authorities have warned that common gonorrhea has now become a difficult-to-treat infection. A bad disease, which until recently was easily treated with traditional antibiotics, has learned to successfully resist doctors. According to the American Center for Disease Control and Prevention, now in the United States already 7% of cases of gonorrhea are considered drug-resistant, that is, difficult to treat.

A classic example of a microbe that has learned to survive an attack by antibiotics is Koch's bacillus, the causative agent of tuberculosis. This disease, considered one of the most dangerous a hundred years ago, was almost driven into a corner in the second half of the 20th century. New drugs and mass vaccination have almost eradicated tuberculosis. But by the 1990s, it turned out that the microbe had become a super microbe: it adapted to new conditions and got used to the blows of antibiotics. Traditional treatments stopped working, and epidemiologists sounded the alarm.

Now tuberculosis is on the rise again. According to Rospotrebnadzor, in our country for every 100 thousand people there are 87-90 infected with this infection, and in some regions (for example, in Siberia) there are up to 120 patients per hundred thousand. This is quite a lot, especially considering that many of them have little or no help from antibiotics. The World Health Organization already fears that an outbreak of drug-resistant tuberculosis in Eastern Europe could spread to the more prosperous west of the continent.

Data from US epidemiologists show that gonorrhea may also follow the path of tuberculosis. Back in 2001, only six cases per thousand were considered drug-resistant; now this figure has increased by an order of magnitude. And if in the 1990s, conventional treatment with fluoroquinolone antibiotics helped almost everyone, now we have to switch to new drugs. It is curious that this is not the first time that this infection has managed to adapt to doctors’ attempts to eradicate it. For example, until the 80s of the last century, it was mainly treated with penicillin and its derivatives, reports the AP agency. Then I had to change the antibiotics. Now, apparently, doctors will have to change their methodology again, but it is possible that the supermicrobe will soon be able to find “super armor” against the new generation of pharmaceutical “superweapons”.

Vladimir DZAGUTO