How The Superbug Discovery Unfolded
It was clear the germ was dangerous, but it took testing to realize the extent. “We had to drop everything else to get this done,” microbiologist Patrick McGann says. “When [the test] came back positive, all hell broke loose.”
The Washington Post:
Behind The Scenes Of A U.S. Superbug Discovery That Made Headlines Around The World
Microbiologist Patrick McGann knew he had identified a dangerous germ. He just didn’t know how dangerous. In mid-May, a colleague had found a strain of E. coli bacteria from a 49-year-old Pennsylvania woman that tested positive for resistance to a drug called colistin. That’s the antibiotic used when all others fail. McGann, whose job is to prevent outbreaks of new pathogens in the U.S. military’s sprawling health-care system, wasn’t yet alarmed. Sometimes mutations occur spontaneously that make bacteria resistant to an antibiotic. It would be a completely different problem, though, if the bacteria turned out to carry a certain colistin-resistant gene called mcr-1. (Sun, 6/6)
