MCR-1 identified in CT toddler

Last week, a 2 year-old girl in CT was identified as the fourth person to be infected with the superbug – a bacteria that is classified as being resistant a last resort antibiotic called colistin.

The patient’s body didn’t respond to colistin, but health experts were able to treat her with other antibiotics and she fully recovered.

In this case, the girl who had been infected had traveled to the Caribbean.

“The patient traveled to the Caribbean for approximately two weeks to visit friends and relatives and developed fever and bloody diarrhea on June 12, two days before returning to the United States”, the team reported.

The E coli bacteria containing the mcr-1 gene have been found in farm animals, but it isn’t clear how people get the bacteria, Walters said. Officials, however, expect more cases to surface in the United States, and on Friday recommended increased surveillance for bacteria that carry the drug-resistance gene.

All the US cases have been treatable by other antibiotics.

All of the patients had E. coli with a gene called mcr-1, which makes the bacteria resistant to the antibiotic colistin, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

First reported in 2015, the mcr-1 gene was detected at that time in food, animal and patient samples from China.

It was feared that the colistin-resistant bacteria would spread their special trait to bacteria already resistant to other medicines, which could result into the stage for superbug infections.

She recovered, Walters said.

When she came back home, she went to the doctor’s office, and stool samples were collected, including one from a soiled diaper.

Research on antibiotic-resistant genes is now a top priority for health institutions in the United States. It has also been found in hospitals, so it might be transmitted in that setting.

Disease detectives studying the case of this woman – and another, a baby in CT who was found in June to be infected with E. coli carrying the mcr-1 gene – identified and tested family members and close contacts who had the type of contact with these two patients that might have led to spread of the bacteria. It is used when bacteria are resistant to other, more commonly used antibiotics. The man was treated successfully with other drugs, and researchers said the bacteria did not cause a major outbreak of drug-resistant infection. This gene gives bacteria the ability to withstand the effects of last-ditch antibiotics. No one tested carried the mcr-1 gene.

“No bacteria with the mcr-1 gene were detected among the 105 persons screened”, the team wrote. They tested more than a 100 people to determine whether or not she had spread the superbug to others, or whether she’d been infected by someone else she’d recently come into contact with, but none of the testing exhibited proof that anyone else had been infected with the superbug.

“We’re hopeful that the risk of transmission to otherwise healthy people is relatively low”, mentioned a CDC epidemiologist, Dr. Alexander Kallen, who is also involved in the study of this case.