United States: An antibiotic that is used for the treatment of liver disease patients has been revealed to put them at high risk of a deadly superbug, according to new research.
Working with an international team of researchers, the healthcare workers also reported that rifaximin, an antibiotic used to treat infections in patients with liver disease, has become a major factor leading to the global emergence of a nearly untreatable strain of the antimicrobial-resistant superbug, which in short known as VRE, which commonly causes serious infections in hospitalized patients.
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This research has shown that rifaximin use has culminated in daptomycin resistance among VRE isolates, the last good hope in combating VRE infections.
The paper published last October 23 in Nature was conducted by the University of Melbourne and Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity (Doherty Institute) and Austin Health to stress further the negative effects of antibiotics where an enhanced understanding of the antibacterial effect –reiterates prudent use of antibiotics in medical practice.
Their findings confirm the recent political statement of the UN General Assembly High-Level Meeting on Antimicrobial Resistance (26 September 2024) that global leaders pledge to take decisive actions on antimicrobial resistance, including the protection of an estimated 4.95 million AMR-associated human deaths annually by 10 percent by 2030.
The eight-year study of molecular microbiology, bioinformatics, and clinical science involved the use of several disciplines. The large-scale genomics, in which the scientists study an organism’s genetic mapping, enabled the identification of alterations in the DNA of daptomycin-resistant VRE that were lacking in susceptible ones.
Another cohort study was conducted to reveal that rifaximin use was responsible for these alterations and led to the development of daptomycin-resistant VRE.
According to the University of Melbourne’s Dr. Glen Carter, a senior research fellow at the Doherty Institute and the senior author of the study, this work conflicts with the previous assumption that rifaximin is associated with a low risk of developing antibiotic resistance.
Dr. Carter stated, “We’ve shown that rifaximin makes VRE resistant to daptomycin in a way that has not been seen before,” medicalxpress.com reported.
“It is also of concern that these daptomycin-resistant VRE might be transmitted to other patients in the hospital, a hypothesis that we are presently investigating,” he added.