Superbug: Klebsiella Pneumoniae

Bacteria that are resistant to several types of antibiotics are called multi-resistant bacteria (also known as superbugs). Superbugs have caused a global epidemic, hiding in plain sight. Every year, superbugs kill off thousands of people, rob them of their health insurance and cost the state millions in order to control this so called epidemic.

This particular bacterium is not one that inhabits a specific geographical region as it colonizes within the human body. The disease is

As the flowchart shows, a series of tests were conducted to identify the unknown bacterium #65. Microscopic observation of the gram stain indicated a gram-positive coccus bacterium. S. epidermidis was used as the gram-positive control while E. coli was used as the gram-negative control. This observation led to the elimination of all gram negative and rod-shaped genera: Enterobacter, Citrobacter, Klebsiella, Escherichia, Pseudomonas, Serratia, Alcaligenes, Neisseria, Proteus, Salmonella, Shigella, Erwinia, Veillonella, Flavobacterium, Bacillus, Arthrobacter, Lactobacillus, Listeria and Kurthia (2). By performing the catalase test, it was determined that the bacterium was catalase negative and it did not produce bubbles. M. luteus and E. faecalis were used as positive and negative controls, respectively.

Klebsiella pneumoniae is a gram-negative bacilli bacterium 0.3-1.0um in diameter and 0.6-6.0 um in length. Cells are capsulated and arranged in pairs or in short chains. K. pneumoniae can cause different types of healthcare associated infections that include pneumonia, blood, and wound infections along with meningitis. K. pneumoniae is normally found in the intestines of human stool. Infections are most common with people who require ventilators, intravenous catheters or patients taking long courses of antibiotics. The primary portal of entry is through the respiratory tract to cause pneumonia or through the blood to cause bacteremia. People with healthy immune systems usually do not get k. pneumoniae infections but should

The pandemic struck the world and infected 1/3 of earth’s human population, killing over 50 million humans. The world’s top doctors have never witnessed anything of this killing magnitude besides the bubonic plague of 1348 but the transmissibility is of nothing they’ve ever seen in their lifetime or of recorded history. People abruptly became aware of the importance of health, and need of medicine and cleanliness.

“The Last Resort,” by Maryn McKenna is an article about antibiotic resistance. It explains the increase of carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae also known as CREs which are a class of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. CREs have been described as “a risk as serious as terrorism”(McKenna, 2013, p.394). CREs can cause bladder, lung, and blood infections that can develop into life-threatening septic shock. Unfortunately, it kills half of the people who contract it. This bacteria is resistant even to carbapenems, which are considered drugs of last resort because of the serious health risks in taking them. “Antibiotics have been falling to resistance for almost as long as people have been using them; Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin, warned about the possibility when he accepted his Nobel prize in 1945”(McKenna, 2013, p.394). Although CREs was first discovered almost 15 years ago, it did not become a public-health priority until just recently. The North Carolinan strain of Klebsiella produced an enzyme called Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase or KPC for short. It broke down carbapenems which made the strongest antibiotic now resistant. “Physicians find themselves caught between using bad drugs or using no drugs at all”(McKenna, 2013,

It is undeniable that the recent discovery of antibiotics and disinfectants in the past century is leading to the creation of increasingly dangerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Super bugs like Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus have begun breaking out in hospital areas, killing more and more patients due to the lack of people following through with simple safety measures. In order to stop the creation and spread of antibiotic-resistant super bugs, proper precautions must be taken such as avoiding antibacterial cleaners, following through with instructions when taking prescriptions and maintaining adequate hand hygiene. Through adhering to basic safety rules, the creation and spread of super bugs can be minimized and all together

breeding ground for bacteria to grow and find new pure hosts. Once one man got sick, they all

The National Institute of Health (NIH), in coordination with President Obama, has set out in 2015 to tackle these very challenges with their “Precision Medicine Plan”, where the NIH is seeking over one million volunteers to provide health related data for “genetic factors... also the role of environmental exposures and their impact on genetic predispositions”, among other goals. (Steenhuysen, 2015) This project in the growing field of precision medicine is now feasible with the recent developments in the field of both data quality and analysis coupled with leaps in computing power that can back it up. (Warshaw, 2015) The NIH plan, while

Klebsiella pneumoniae (K. pneumoniae) is a Gram-negative rod bacteria that is non-motile, ferments lactose and is a facultative anaerobe that is encapsulated such as to deceive the host’s immune system to carry out its job (Microbewiki, 2015). K. pneumoniae causes an abundance of different nosocomial infections such as pneumonia, infections of the blood, urinary tract infections, infections in the wound (surgical sites), septicemia, and meningitis; patients who are on ventilators, have an intravenous catheter, or are prescribed with a broad spectrum antibiotic are more apt to contracting the disease (CDC, 2015). K. pneumoniae can affect the Respiratory System (causing pneumonia), the Cardiovascular System (causing the blood infections),

Hospitals in the United States do not have to report outbreaks to the government. However, according to the documentary the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention estimated that two million Americans are infected with resistance bacteria, which can result in about 23,000 Americans death each year. This is a hidden and silent epidemic with KPC found in hospitals in 44 states in the United States. In addition, there have been 32 confirmed cases this documentary in 14 countries with NDM-1 gene. The documentary should have explored what the U.S., India and other countries do differently or similarly in treating the superbug NDM-1. The US had in recent years signed a deal with GlaxoSmithKline worth $200 million on development and research of drug resistance antibiotics (Hirschler). GlaxoSmithKline is a “global healthcare group, which is engaged in the creation and discovery, development, manufacture and marketing of

This is Rebecca Lohsen. She was a healthy 17-year-old high school student and swimmer from New Jersey. In 2006, she died from a MRSA infection, and it’s an infection that’s really hard to cure because it’s caused by a kind of bacteria called a superbug. (Infectious Diseases Society of America, September 2007, para. 1). It’s important to understand what superbugs are and how they come about because they’re a present and ongoing problem, and everyone here might just be affected by them. I’ve long been interested in the problem of superbugs, and in sharing the information, because it’s a threat to public health that I think not many people know about. So, in the next few

In 1995, J. Craig Venter and colleagues published the first complete sequence of the genome of a self-replicating, free-living organism - Haemophilus Influenzae. Known as H.flu, Haemophilus Influenzae is a bacterium that can lead to meningitis and ear and respiratory problems in children. Before this discovery, scientists had only managed to sequence the genome of some viruses, which are around ten times shorter than that of H.flu. The project took a year to be done and was a huge achievement. Its success proved that the random shotgun technique could be used to whole genomes quickly and accurately, paving the way for future discoveries

I certainly remember sitting in high school biology class and reaching the point in the year when microbial and bacterial genetics and replication is covered. That topic was always capped with the unfortunate fact that a unnerving amount of diseases, whether they be bacterial, fungal, parasitic, and on the rare occasion, viral, are becoming resistant to the commonplace pharmaceuticals used to remedy them. Disease such as tuberculosis, MRSA, gonorrhea, and CDIFF, that have proven to be fatal, have a new trick up their molecular sleeve to further bring harm to patients everywhere. They have grown resistant to their typical medicines – usually antibiotics – making the disease harder to get treat, get rid of, and prevent from spreading.

An important feature of this project is the federal government's long-standing dedication to transfer the technology to private sector by licensing them, awarding grants for innovative research and earning multi-billion U. S dollars that could later be used for medical researchers. To help achieve these goals, researchers also are studying the genetic makeup of several nonhuman organisms. These include the common human gut bacterium Escherichia coli, the fruit fly, and the laboratory mouse. The process for the sequencing of the Human Genome is long and complicated.