New Multi-Drug Resistant Strain of Salmonella Identified

A new European study has identified the emergence of a potentially deadly new strain of salmonella that highly resistant to Cipro, the primary drug used to battle infections of the bacteria.

Worse yet, samples of this super bug have also been shown to be resistant to a variety of other antibiotics including amoxicillin, streptomycin, spectinomycin, gentamicin, sulfamethoxazole and tetracycline. The details of the study appear online in the Journal of Infectious Diseases

While the first infections were acquired primarily in Egypt between 2002 and 2005, the new strain also infected 489 patients in France, England, Wales, and Denmark between 2000 and 2008. However, among the European cases reported, only about 10 percent of patients reported international travel, suggesting that infections occurred due to consumption of imported foods, or through secondary contaminations. Infections have also occurred in various parts of Africa and the Middle East.

According to Dr. François-Xavier Weill of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, and colleagues, recent reports of infections occurring in Canada, as well as contamination of foods imported into the United States, indicate that that the newly identified strain of salmonella, known as CIPR, has now reached North America.

To track the rise of the CIPR strain, the research team used surveillance data from the three European countries and the CDC, and found a total of 489 resistant samples. During the study period, the number of cases rose from just three cases in 2002 to 174 in 2008. The study authors noted that this number is likely an underestimation due to “limitations in the catchment area of these national surveillance systems.”

In an accompanying editorial to the study report, Craig Hedberg of the University Of Minnesota School Of Public Health in Minneapolis contended that differences in national surveillance systems place limitations on the ability to monitor such outbreaks.

The researchers reported that the multi-drug resistant strain has claimed a growing proportion of all incidence of infection with Salmonella enterica serotype Kentucky in France, England and Wales, and Denmark over the course of the study. With the exclusion of the U.S., CIPR cases have accounted for between 35 percent and 40.2 percent of all salmonella Kentucky samples from 2002 to 2008, while the percentage of Salmonella samples submitted from clinical laboratories to national health reference laboratories ranged from 65 percent in France to 9 percent in Denmark.

On the heels of the study report comes another report from U.S. officials regarding an outbreak of salmonellosis suspected to be linked to consumption of ground turkey having claimed the life of one person, and having caused illness among 76 others. However, the outbreak is due to the strain salmonella Heidelberg, known to be more commonly associated with human illness than the s. Kentucky strain.

The report authors noted that the CIPR strain has been isolated from both chickens and turkeys from Ethiopia, Morocco, and Nigeria, suggesting that poultry is a significant infection route for the strain, as well as for the Heidelberg strain responsible for the U.S. outbreak.

In a journal news release, study co-leader Simon Le Hello said, “We hope that this publication might stir awareness among national and international health, food, and agricultural authorities so that they take the necessary measures to control and stop the dissemination of this strain before it spreads globally, as did another multi-drug-resistant strain of salmonella, [known as] Typhimurium DT104, starting in the 1990s.”

Salmonella is a potentially life-threatening disease, especially for those having weakened immunity. Symptoms of salmonella poisoning include diarrhea, abdominal cramps, and fever within eight to 72 hours of eating a contaminated product.

According to the CDC, while an estimated 50 million Americans fall ill from food poisoning each year, about 3,000 people will die from it. In the majority of these cases, Salmonella is to blame, and little headway has been made in the battle against the disease

Wednesday 16:20 27/02/2013