In another article in the New England Journal of Medicine
Dr. L. Clifford McDonald, an author of both articles and an epidemiologist at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, says, "I don't want to scare people away from using antibiotics. ... But it's concerning, and we need to respond. Hospitals need to be conducting surveillance and implementing control measures. And all of us need to realize the risk of antibiotic use may be increasing" as the bacteria continue to mutate.
The bacterium is Clostridium difficile, also known as C-diff. The germ is becoming a regularity in hospitals and nursing homes, last year being blamed for 100 deaths over 18 months at a hospital in Quebec, Canada.
The article, published in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, focuses on cases involving 33 otherwise healthy people that were reported since 2003 in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey and New Hampshire.
Most of the 33 had not been in a hospital within three months of becoming sick, and eight say they hadn't taken any antibiotics during that time.
C-diff is found in the colon and can cause diarrhea and a more serious intestinal condition known as colitis. It is spread by spores in feces.
The spores are difficult to kill with most conventional household cleaners. Even washing your hands with an antibacterial soap does not eliminate all the germs.
C-diff has grown resistant to certain antibiotics that work against other colon bacteria, causing competing bacteria to die off and C-diff to explode.
One of the 33 patients in the report died - a 31-year-old Pennsylvania woman who was 14 weeks pregnant with twins when she first went to the emergency room with symptoms. Despite treatment with antibiotics considered effective against C-diff, she lost the fetuses and then died.
Ten of the 33 were otherwise healthy pregnant women or women who had recently given birth who and had brief hospital stays. The rest were people in the Philadelphia area who had not been in a hospital in the three months before their illness.
The New England Journal of Medicine
The researchers find that a virulent strain of C-diff, rarely seen before 2000, accounts for more than half of the samples taken in the hospitals.
