An antibiotic-resistant bacterial “superbug” is far more widespread in the Indian megalopolis of New Delhi than previously thought, worrying public health officials around the world.
As the Associated Press reports, a study published in the British journal The Lancet found NDM-1 in more than one-fifth of the samples that researchers examined of drinking water and puddles along the streets of New Delhi. The researchers say that up to 500,000 people in the city are likely carrying NDM-1 among their intestinal bacteria.
According to a blog post by Brandi Limbago, a microbiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “When not held in check by our body’s normal defenses, these same bacteria can cause serious infections, especially in hospitalized patients with medical devices such as catheters or ventilators.”
The superbug, which is treated with only a couple of highly toxic and expensive antibiotics, was discovered in 2008. Since then it has popped up in about 70 countries, including the United States. Most of the cases of NDM-1 come in patients who have recently visited India, Pakistan or Bangladesh.
“This is not a problem that is looming in the future … there are people dying today from infections that can’t be treated,” said Dr. David Heymann, who heads the United Kingdom’s Health Protection Agency.
The news comes as the World Health Organization is issuing a plea for “urgent and concerted action” internationally to combat superbugs such as NDM-1, which is short for New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase.
The study, conducted by British researchers, compared 221 water samples in New Delhi to 70 from Cardiff, Wales. In Cardiff, not a single sample showed NDM-1, but in New Delhi, it appeared in 53, all but two of them samples from puddles. In 11 of the New Delhi samples, the superbug was linked to infectious bacteria such as those that cause dysentery and cholera.
“We have a vested interest in sorting out sanitation problems in India,” Mark Toleman, one of the study’s authors and a senior research fellow at Cardiff University, told the AP. He said Western nations need to spend more to clean up the water supply in Asian countries. “Otherwise [superbugs] could filter out from Asia and will spread through the world.”
Other experts said that more research was needed, but acknowledged the potential danger of a superbug outbreak. “The potential for wider international spread … is real and should not be ignored,” wrote Mohd Shahid of India’s Aligarh Muslim University in a commentary published with the research.
If we can accidentally breed such tough forms of life, how come we cannot deliberately make one that can survive on, say, Venus?