A Woman Was Killed by a Superbug Resistant to All 26 American Antibiotics

It's only a matter of time before this becomes not an isolated case, but a major outbreak. We need to drastically reduce our antibiotic use, especially in farm animals.

A Woman Was Killed by a Superbug Resistant to All 26 American Antibiotics
She won’t be the last.
Sarah Zhang
Jan 13, 2017

Klebsiella pneumoniae bacteria, the same species that killed the Nevada woman CDC

Yesterday morning, I published a story about the silent spread of resistance against the antibiotic of last resort, colistin—a major step toward the emergence of a superbug resistant to all antibiotics. While reporting this story, I interviewed Alex Kallen, an epidemiologist at the CDC, and I asked if anyone had found such a superbug yet. “Funny you should ask,” he said.

Funny—by which we all mean scary—because yesterday afternoon, the CDC also released a report about a Nevada woman who died after an infection resistant to 26 antibiotics, which is to say all available antibiotics in the U.S. The woman, who was in her 70s, had been previously hospitalized in India after fracturing her leg, eventually which led to an infection in her hip. There was nothing to treat her infection—not colistin, not other last-line antibiotics. Scientists later tested the bacteria that killed her, and found it was somewhat susceptible to fosfomycin, but that antibiotic is not approved in the U.S. to treat her type of infection.