A new superbug from India, named after country’s capital, could spread across the world, thanks to people coming over to India for affordable treatment. (Medical tourism)
New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase, or NDM-1, in patients in South Asia and in Britain, say researchers.
It is reported that there have been three cases so far in the US, all from people who received treatment from India recently.
India has recently become hub of medical tourism, thanks to the affordable cost here and high expertise of doctors.
The superbug is said to be highly resistant to almost all the antibiotics, including the most powerful calss called carbapenems. According to experts, there are no drugs so far in store to tackle the superbug.
However, this news is viewed by many in India as an attempt by the West to arrest their sliding fortunes in the medical industry and to stop people travelling to India for better medical care at affordable cost.
What is a superbug?
Antibiotic resistance (also referred as New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase, or NDM-1 is a type of drug resistance where a microorganism has developed the ability to survive exposure to an antibiotic. Genes can be transferred between bacteria in a horizontal fashion by conjugation, transduction, or transformation. Thus a gene for antibiotic resistance which had evolved via natural selection may be shared. Evolutionary stress such as exposure to antibiotics then selects for the antibiotic resistant trait. Many antibiotic resistance genes reside on plasmids, facilitating their transfer. If a bacterium carries several resistance genes, it is called multiresistant or, informally, a superbug.
The primary cause of antibiotic resistance is antibiotic use both within medicine and veterinary medicine. The greater the duration of exposure the greater the risk of the development of resistance irrespective of the severity of the need for antibiotics.
Courtesy:http://en.wikipedia.org
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