New superbug found in Alberta resident
Posted Aug 11, 2010 9:36 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A new superbug that is garnering worldwide attention has been identified in an Alberta resident.
The new bacteria that has emerged from India is resistant to even the strongest antibiotics.
Dr. Johann Pitout, a medical researcher at the University of Calgary, who also works with Calgary Laboratory Services, helped identify the case about two months ago.
He tells 660News what he knows about the Alberta case, “This patient was admitted to a hospital in India while travelling and then came back to Alberta with the same sort of infection. The blood was sent to me and we looked at it and identified the same gene that has been described in Lancet.”
The journal Lancet Infectious Diseases carried a report Wednesday on the discovery of the new gene, called NDM-1 which alters bacteria, making them resistant to nearly all known antibiotics.
Dr. Pitout says people travelling to India, Pakistan and Bangladesh need to be on high alert especially if they are being treated in hospitals.
Canada’s Public Health Agency has not confirmed the patient was from Alberta, but they do say the one Canadian superbug case was found in a woman who was treated successfully at a hospital in Vancouver.
