Antibiotic-Resistant Bugs in the 21st Century — A Clinical Super-Challenge

Drs. Cesar Arias and Barbara Murray write that we have arrived at a point as frightening as the preantibiotic era: for patients infected with multidrug-resistant bacteria, there is no magic bullet. In March 1942, a 33-year-old woman lay dying of streptococcal sepsis in a New Haven, Connecticut, hosp...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:The New England journal of medicine Vol. 360; no. 5; pp. 439 - 443
Main Authors: Arias, Cesar A, Murray, Barbara E
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: United States Massachusetts Medical Society 29.01.2009
Subjects:
Antibiotics
Drug resistance
Drug Resistance, Multiple, Bacterial - genetics
Enterococcus faecium - drug effects
Enterococcus faecium - pathogenicity
Gram-Negative Bacteria - pathogenicity
Gram-Negative Bacterial Infections - drug therapy
Hospitals
Humans
Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus - genetics
Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus - pathogenicity
Mutation
Staphylococcus infections
Vancomycin Resistance - genetics
United States > US
ISSN:0028-4793, 1533-4406, 1533-4406
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Drs. Cesar Arias and Barbara Murray write that we have arrived at a point as frightening as the preantibiotic era: for patients infected with multidrug-resistant bacteria, there is no magic bullet. In March 1942, a 33-year-old woman lay dying of streptococcal sepsis in a New Haven, Connecticut, hospital, and despite the best efforts of contemporary medical science, her doctors could not eradicate her bloodstream infection. Then they managed to obtain a small amount of a newly discovered substance called penicillin, which they cautiously injected into her. After repeated doses, her bloodstream was cleared of streptococci, she made a full recovery, and she went on to live to the age of 90. 1 Sixty-six years after her startling recovery, a report 2 described a 70-year-old man in San Francisco with endocarditis caused by vancomycin-resistant . . .
Bibliography:SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
content type line 14
ObjectType-Feature-4
ObjectType-Editorial-2
ObjectType-Commentary-1
ObjectType-Article-3
ObjectType-Article-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 23
ISSN:0028-4793
1533-4406
1533-4406
DOI:10.1056/NEJMp0804651