Originally published December 27 2005
Deadly bacteria sweeps through U.S. hospitals
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
The New England Journal of Medicine has published two studies pertaining to a powerful drug-resistant form of bacteria known as Clostridium, which has spread through eight U.S. hospitals.
According to one of the studies, a new, virulent and resistant strain of the bacteria Clostridium difficile broke out in eight US hospital centers between 2000 and 2003.
Provoked by antibiotics inside the intestines of hospital patients, the bacteria showed an ability to mutate and increase its resistance to drugs, the report said.
Moreover, the bacteria, which infects the colon causing severe diarrhea and colitis, a severe inflammation of the intestine, has begun showing up in patients not taking antibiotics or visiting hospitals.
Symptoms include watery, malodorous diarrhea and cramps.
A second study of 1,703 patients in 12 hospitals in Quebec, Canada, demonstrated the lethality of the bacteria.
Over 13 years the incidence of the bacteria grew fourfold in Quebec, and in 2004 it caused the deaths of 117 people in the first month after they were diagnosed.
"Hospitals need to be conducting surveillance and implementing control measures.
And all of us need to realize the risk of antibiotic use may be increasing," warned epidemiologist Clifford McDonald of the US Centers for Disiease Control.
Scientists were concerned that Clostridium difficile -- so-named because of the difficulty in detecting it -- had become very resistant to fluoroquinolone antibiotics usually used to treat such infections.
"If this epidemic strain continues to spread (...) it will be important either to reconsider the use of fluoroquinolones or to develop other innovative measures for controlling C. difficile-associated disease," said McDonald.
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