01 September,2010 07:31 AM IST | | Alifiya Khan
Upset with western study that India's given the world a bug resistant to antibiotics, hospitals to do molecular mapping of bacteria
Miffed at a study published in world-renowned medical journal Lancet Infectious Diseases that suggests an extremely dangerous superbug that makes patients unresponsive to antibiotics is spreading from Indian hospitals, hospitals in the city and Mumbai have started molecular mapping of bacteria to establish whether such a bug is prevalent in the western region.
The published study says a gene that makes bacteria resistant even to the most powerful antibiotics is spreading rapidly from India through medial tourism. The superbug named New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase-1 (NDM-1) is said to make even the most powerful antibiotics not work on a person who has got the infection ufffd and what is worse is that the infection can be transmitted from one person to another.
Better proof needed
Not happy after the study linked Indian cities to the superbug "without credible and widespread evidence", microbiologists will now collect samples from patients to check for presence of the bacteria. "Every year we test some 8,000-odd samples collected from patients for bacterial infections. The doctors send it to us to know what type of bacteria is affecting patients and what drug is showing maximum sensitivity and will work best," said Dr Renu Bharadwaj, head of Microbiology Department at Sassoon General Hospital. "Of these samples, we get a sizeable sample of metallo-beta-lactamase bacteria and this time we will undertake molecular mapping of these isolates to check if this strain is similar to NDM- 1."
She explained that the metallo-beta-lactamese bacteria is not uncommon in hospitals and is present across the world. "Such bacteria are present across the world and antibiotic resistance is a problem all hospitals are dealing with. Hence, it is unfair to call these bacteria after New Delhi and issue an alert against medical tourism to India," said Bharadwaj. "Since Pune is one centre where they claim they found NDM-1, we will do a much bigger sampling and see if this bug is indeed present in hospitals here."
In Mumbai
At Mumbai's Tata Memorial Hospital, similar work is on. Dr Rohini Kelkar, head of Microbiology Department, is doing a study to identify if the superbug exists in Mumbai hospitals.
"I have been involved in hospital infection control since the past 20 years and have identified metallo-beta-lactamese almost a decade ago. It is likely that there are many other super bugs floating around as we misuse antibiotics to a large extent. However if the NDM-1 indeed exists in our city, we will study it and establish what drugs work best for it," said Kelkar. "The most important is to establish its prevalence first and then check drug
sensitivity."
