Killer superbugs mainly emerging from hospitals, not animals & environment—study by Indian, UK scientists

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New Delhi: Superbugs responsible for life-threatening infections and highly resistant to last resort antibiotics may be emerging in hospitals, primarily due to misuse and abuse of such drugs, rather than environmental pressure, a crucial study from India has shown...

The research was based on the analysis of the evolution of extreme drug resistance in Klebsiella pneumoniae, a bacterium...

The World Health Organization (WHO) has listed it as a pathogen of critical priority, which means it poses a major global threat because not only is it resistant to treatment but can also spread resistance to other bacteria.. pneumoniae accounts for 18 percent of all bloodstream infections, with 57 percent of these organisms exhibiting resistance to last resort antibiotics such as carbapenems...

The pathogen samples were then analysed to understand the evolution of genes responsible for antimicrobial resistance (AMR), and the results showed that the isolates originating from livestock were clonally distinct (genetically distinct from clones) from those derived from clinical or hospital samples...

Superbugs have been found in patient samplesblood, urine, and other fluidscollected between 2017 and 2023 from outpatient departments (OPD), wards and intensive care units (ICU) of hospitals including AllMS and Sir Ganga Ram Hospital in Delhi, the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) in Chandigarh, and Apollo Hospitals in Chennai, among others, according to the report...

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