
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, February 20, 1994                   TAG: 9402200064
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: SAN FRANCISCO                                LENGTH: Medium

BACTERIA BECOMING INVINCIBLE?

Common bacteria that cause pneumonia, children's ear infections and many other diseases are evolving into forms untreatable by all known medicines, threatening a chilling post-antibiotic era that would be "nothing short of a medical disaster," a researcher said Saturday.

In the post-antibiotic world, the simplest infections could quickly escalate into fatal illnesses, said Alexander Tomasz of Rockefeller University in New York City.

The first antibiotic, penicillin, became widely available in 1940. For 50 years, most bacterial infections have been treatable. Certain uncommon bacteria already have developed untreatable strains, though. Tomasz said laboratory experiments have proven the same thing can happen with common bacteria.

Tomasz, a leading authority on bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics, sounded the alarm at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Doctors at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta share his concern.

"It's potentially an extremely serious problem," said Dr. Mitchell Cohen of the CDC.

Any new drugs that might be developed to cope with the deadly bacteria are at least five to seven years away, and drug companies are not pursuing them eagerly, Cohen said.

Certain strains of pneumococcus are treatable by only one antibiotic, called vancomycin, the researchers said. If those bacteria become resistant to vancomycin, too, there will be no treatment for them at all.

Pneumococcus bacteria cause hundreds of thousands of cases of pneumonia in the United States each year. The bacteria also are responsible for perhaps half of the 24 million annual office visits to American pediatricians for treatment of earaches, Cohen said.

Certain strains of enterococcus, which cause wound and blood infections, already have become resistant to vancomycin and all other known antibiotics.

Researchers know that such resistant bacteria can cover the globe in a matter of years. They have seen what happened with penicillin.

Before 1980, only a few scattered cases were reported of pneumococcus that were resistant to penicillin. But that year, penicillin-resistant strains began appearing everywhere. They are now common worldwide.

Spread has occurred quickly with the untreatable form of enterococcus, too. In one New York hospital, the untreatable strain wasn't present in 1989. By 1992, it was responsible for 58 percent of the infections with that species of enterococcus, Tomasz said.

"If you get the infection," he said, "you are in the Almighty's hands."

by CNB