ET ISSUE 2183 Thursday 17 May 2001

Superbug children immune to antibiotics
By Robert Uhlig, Technology Correspondent

MORE than one in 10 British children carry superbugs that are resistant to one or more antibiotics, and the proportion of adult carriers could be even higher, scientists report today.

A study of 539 seven and eight-year-old children in Bristol found that 11 per cent of them were carrying bacteria such as an E.coli strain that is resistant to chloramphenicol, a drug rarely given orally to children. Of more concern, three per cent of the children carried bacteria resistant to ceftazidime, an antibiotic reserved for treating serious conditions such as cystic fibrosis.

The study implies that bacteria resistant to common antibiotics may become simultaneously resistant to less frequently used antibiotics. This is because the genes that make the bacteria resistant are found on the same piece of bacterial DNA and are passed on together.

Michael Millar, author of the study and a consultant in microbiology at St Bartholomew's and the Royal London School of Medicine, said: "We need policies to control antibiotic resistance that go across boundaries."

The superbugs are not immediately threatening to the children carrying them, but they could cause dangerous and untreatable infections after an operation. Carriers can infect other people.

Superbugs such as methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, are already a considerable problem in hospitals, but relatively little is known about the extent of resistance in the healthy population.

-- Anonymous, May 16, 2001