“New resistance mechanism often MDR pathogen Acinetobacter baumannii”
“A team of Australian and Portuguese investigators has discovered yet another resistance mechanism in the pathogen, Acinetobacter baumannii, in this case, one that blocks the critical antibiotic-of-last-resort, colistin. A. baumannii is a highly troublesome pathogen globally, infecting primarily patients in intensive care units with ventilator-associated pneumonia, blood stream infections, and urinary tract infections. The research is published in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology.
The genesis of the research was the discovery by Portuguese clinicians that A. baumannii from a bloodstream infection remained in an elderly patient even after treatment. “Colistin was being used as a last-resort treatment as the strain was highly multidrug resistant,” the patient having already been treated with six different antibiotics, said corresponding author John Boyce, PhD, BSc (Hons).
“The infection could not be cleared as the strain developed high-level colistin resistance during treatment,” said Dr. Boyce, who is Associate Professor, Infection and Immunity Program, Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute, and Department of Microbiology, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. “The clinicians wanted to understand how the strain had become highly colistin resistant, so we determined whole genome sequences of the pre- and post-treatment isolates.” (Dr. Boyce’s conversations with these clinicians at a conference in Rome led to the collaboration on this research.)”
Source: American Society for Microbiology