WASHINGTON, Dec. 29 (UPI) -- There has been a surge in drug-resistant strains of Acinetobacter, a dangerous bacteria becoming increasingly common in U.S. hospitals, a researcher says.
Principal investigator Ramanan Laxminarayan of Extending the Cure in Washington, a visiting scholar and lecturer at Princeton University in New Jersey, says Acinetobacter poses dangers to hospital patients and has caused pneumonia or bloodstream infections.
Laxminarayan said a study of U.S. hospitals found many strains of Acinetobacter are resistant to Imipenem -- an antibiotic reserved for last-line treatment. Imipenem is a broad spectrum injectable antibiotic that has the ability to kill a wide variety of bacteria.
"The findings are troubling because they suggest this bacteria is becoming resistant to nearly everything in our arsenal," Laxminarayan says in a statement. "There is a lot of attention on methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, but less on infections caused by bacteria like Acinetobacter for which there are fewer drugs in the development pipeline."
All drug resistance is a concern but it is particularly worrying in the case of "superbugs" for which there are few treatment options, Laxminarayan said.
The findings are published online ahead of print in the journal Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology.
