Researchers have discovered alarming levels of antibiotic resistance in bacteria in war victims in Ukraine. Professor Christian Risbeck highlights the unprecedented levels of resistance, particularly in… Klebsiella pneumoniae bacteria, emphasizing the need for international assistance to address this serious problem.
A team from Lund University in Sweden collaborated with Ukrainian microbiologists to study bacterial resistance in war-injured and hospitalized patients.
The latest results are published in scalpel Infectious disease showed that many patients had bacteria with much higher levels of antibiotic resistance.
“I am thick-skinned and have witnessed many situations involving patients and bacteria. “However, I must admit that I have never encountered bacteria with this kind of resistance before,” said Christian Risbeck, professor of clinical bacteriology at Lund University.
There is no doubt that we can help when Dr. Oleksandr Nazarchuk, a microbiologist at a university in Vinnytsia, Ukraine, contacted us. Ukraine needs help to assess levels of antibiotic resistance among seriously injured patients in hospitals.
In addition to the human suffering caused by the war in Ukraine, another battle is now underway – the invisible war against resistant bacteria. This became clear when Christian Risbek and fellow researchers analyzed patient samples from critically injured patients, many of whom had burns, in Ukraine. Patients become infected while in hospital, mainly due to overcrowded wards and damaged infrastructure.
Samples were collected from a total of 141 war casualties, 133 adults injured during the war, and eight infants diagnosed with pneumonia. These patients were treated at three different hospitals in Ukraine, where they received emergency surgery and intensive care to treat their conditions.
“We noticed that many Gram-negative bacteria showed resistance to broad-spectrum antimicrobial agents, including newly developed enzyme-inhibiting antibiotics that were not yet available on the market. In addition, about ten percent of samples contained bacteria that showed resistance even to these antibiotics. the final choice is colistin. Although we have encountered similar cases in India and China before, none compared to the level of resistance observed in this study. Up to six percent of all samples contained bacteria that were resistant to each of the antibiotics we tested.”
He emphasized that this clearly highlights the challenges posed by resistant bacteria in times of war. In particular, Christian Risbeck expressed his concern about the resistance he carried out Klebsiella pneumoniae Bacteria, because they have the potential to cause disease in people whose immune systems are healthy and functioning well.
“This makes me very anxious. We rarely see it Klebsiella With such a high level of resistance, it was not what we expected. Although isolated cases have been documented in China, the scale of this situation is greater than anything we have seen before. Although many countries are providing military assistance and resources to Ukraine, it is important to help it overcome this ongoing situation. “There is a clear risk that resistant bacteria will spread, and this threatens the entire European region,” said Christian Risbeck.
Reference: “Highly drug-resistant Gram-negative bacterial infections in war victims in Ukraine, 2022” by Oskar Ljungquist, Oleksandr Nazarchuk, Gunnar Kalmaitre, Vijith Andrews, Thalia Koethan, Lisa Wasserstrom, Dmytro Dmitriev, Nadia Fomina, Vera Bebek, Erika Matuszek and Christian Risbek May 23, 2023 Lancet Infectious Diseases.
two: 10.1016/S1473-3099(23)00291-8
2023-09-07 22:56:18
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