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A potentially deadly "superbug" resistant to antibiotics infected seven patients, including two who died, and nearly 200 others were exposed at a Southern California hospital through contaminated medical instruments, UCLA reported Wednesday.

NBC4’s Dr. Bruce Hensel answers questions about enterobacteriaceae bacteria, which may have contributed to the deaths of two patients at Ronald Reagan-UCLA Medical Center. Medical equipment tainted with a deadly "superbug" may have contributed to the deaths of two patients at Ronald Reagan-UCLA Medical Center, and dozens of other patients may have been infected with the drug-resistant bacteria as well, officials said Wednesday. UCLA Health System officials said 179 patients had been notified about the exposure, which took place between October 2014 and January 2015. The patients were treated for digestive ailments ranging from gallstones to cancers. Doctors used a...

A deadly epidemic that could have global implications is quietly sweeping India, and among its many victims are tens of thousands of newborns dying because once-miraculous cures no longer work. These infants are born with bacterial infections that are resistant to most known antibiotics, and more than 58,000 died last year as a result, a recent study found. While that is still a fraction of the nearly 800,000 newborns who die annually in India, Indian pediatricians say that the rising toll of resistant infections could soon swamp efforts to improve India's abysmal infant death rate. Nearly a third of the...

Mark Smith was a microbiology graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology when, in 2011, a family friend became infected with the notorious superbug clostridium difficile. C. diff can cause severe diarrhea, disability, and malnutrition and is responsible for roughly 14,000 deaths in the United States each year. In 2012, after taking seven rounds of the antibiotic vancomycin and failing to improve, Smith’s friend received a DIY fecal transplant from his roommate—in their apartment, using an over-the-counter enema kit. The friend recovered within days, but “the whole thing was absurd, not at all how it should be done,” Smith...

Some harmful bacteria are increasingly resistant to treatment with antibiotics. A discovery might be able to help the antibiotics treat the disease. A soil sample from a national park in eastern Canada has produced a compound that appears to reverse antibiotic resistance in dangerous bacteria. Scientists at McMaster University in Ontario discovered that the compound almost instantly turned off a gene in several harmful bacteria that makes them highly resistant to treatment with a class of antibiotics used to fight so-called superbug infections. The compound, called aspergillomarasmine A, or AMA, was extracted from a common fungus found in soil and...

LESS THAN A CENTURY AGO, the age-old evolutionary relationship between humans and microbes was transformed not by a gene, but by an idea. The antibiotic revolution inaugurated the era of modern medicine, trivializing once-deadly infections and paving the way for medical breakthroughs: organ transplants and chemotherapy would be impossible without the ability to eliminate harmful bacteria seemingly at will. But perhaps every revolution contains the seeds for its own undoing, and antibiotics are no exception: antibiotic resistance—the rise of bacteria impervious to the new “cure”—has followed hard on the heels of each miracle drug. Recently, signs have arisen that the...

The largest outbreak to date of one strain of what authorities have called “nightmare bacteria” is adding to concerns about the spread of such drug-resistant bugs. The outbreak, centered on a hospital in a Chicago suburb, has infected 44 people in Illinois over the past year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. The bug, known as carbapenem-resistant enterobacteriaceae, bears a rare enzyme that breaks down antibiotics. “This is a huge cluster,” said Alex Kallen, a medical officer with the CDC and supervisor for the Illinois outbreak investigation, noting that only 97 cases of the infection have been reported...

Certain types of antidepressants may put people at an increased risk for developing a deadly superbug infection, a new study suggested. Researchers from the University of Michigan revealed that individuals who suffer from depression and those taking antidepressants such as mirtazapine and fluoxetine had a much higher chance of contracting Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) – a life threatening infection that can cause severe diarrhea and inflammation of the colon. One of the most common infections acquired by patients at hospitals, C. difficile has been occurring with more and more frequency, resulting in the deaths of 14,000 individuals in the United...

An antibiotic-resistant strain of gonorrhea—now considered a superbug—has some analysts saying that the bacteria's effects could match those of AIDS. "This might be a lot worse than AIDS in the short run because the bacteria is more aggressive and will affect more people quickly," said Alan Christianson, a doctor of naturopathic medicine.

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — A new threat emerges as a strand of untreatable and potentially deadly bacteria has begun spreading throughout the U.S., and health officials say one of these bugs is in Los Angeles. The bacteria, called C.R.E., is spreading throughout hospitals all across the country. These “superbugs” are resistant to almost all antibiotics, have high mortality rates, and can spread their resistance to other bacteria. Dr. Suman Radhakrishna, the chair of infection control at the California Hospital Medical Center, says that these bacteria are usually found in the colon. “They can cause bloodstream infections, urinary type infections, and...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is alerting clinicians of an emerging untreatable multidrug-resistant organism in the United States. There are many forms of Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), but of the 37 forms reported in the U.S., 15 have been reported in less than a year. The CDC said the increase in CRE means health care providers need to “act aggressively to prevent the emergence and spread of these unusual CRE organisms.” Enterobacteriaceae lives in water, soil and the human gut. These “surperbugs” have developed high levels of resistance to antibiotics – even carbapanems. Individuals who usually develop CRE infections...

A sharp jump in the number of rare but potentially deadly types of a superbug resistant to nearly all last-resort antibiotics has prompted government health officials to renew warnings for U.S. hospitals, nursing homes and other health care settings. The move comes just as researchers in Israel are reporting that people colonized with dangerous CRE -- Carbapenem-resistant enterobacteriaceae -- can take more than a year before they test negative for the bacteria, making it more difficult to control -- and raising the risk of wider spread. Reports of unusual forms of CRE have nearly doubled in the U.S., the Centers...

In an average year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 21 million Americans get the norovirus, with classic stomach flu symptoms such as vomiting and diarrhea. Eight hundred die. Symptoms come on very suddenly, within hours after a person has been exposed to it. Because no one has immunity to this new strain, more Americans — perhaps 50 percent more, the CDC says — could become violently ill. While the flu is spread mostly in the air by sneezes and coughs and a person needs to breathe in as many as 1,000 virus particles to get...

A deadly bacteria known as Carbapenem-Resistant Enterobacteriaceae, or CRE, is raising concerns in the medical community. Jennifer Hsu in an Infectious Disease Physician at Sanford Health and has been closely studying this 'super bug' which is best known for it's ability to defy even the strongest of drugs. “What has happened over time with increasing exposure to antibiotics the bacteria have developed ways to evade those antibiotics and they become resist to a certain class of antibiotics,” said Hsu. In the United States, the bacteria have been found primarily in healthcare facilities and hospitals and are known to prey on...

A deadly, drug-resistant superbug outbreak that began last summer at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center claimed its seventh victim Sept. 7, when a seriously ill boy from Minnesota succumbed to a bloodstream infection, officials said Friday. The boy was the 19th patient at the research hospital to contract an antibiotic-resistant strain of the bacterium Klebsiella pneumoniae that arrived in August 2011 with a New York woman who needed a lung transplant. But his case marked the first new infection of this superbug at NIH since January — a worrisome signal that the bug persists inside the huge brick-and-glass...

A deadly germ untreatable by most antibiotics has killed a seventh person at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in Maryland.

Ron Fouchier, a giant of a man at more than two meters tall (6'6"), has dark circles under his eyes. His life has been stressful lately. "They want to paint me as a homicidal idiot," he says heatedly. He is referring, most of all, to a powerful institution from the United States, the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB). … Fouchier is attracting so much attention because he has created a new organism. And although it is tiny, if it escaped from his laboratory it would claim far more human lives than an exploding nuclear power plant. The pathogen...

Hate insects? Afraid of germs? Researchers are reporting an alarming combination: bedbugs carrying a staph "superbug." Canadian scientists detected drug-resistant staph bacteria in bedbugs from three hospital patients from a downtrodden Vancouver neighborhood. Bedbugs have not been known to spread disease, and there's no clear evidence that the five bedbugs found on the patients or their belongings had spread the MRSA germ they were carrying or a second less dangerous drug-resistant bacteria. However, bedbugs can cause itching that can lead to excessive scratching. That can cause breaks in the skin that make people more susceptible to these germs, noted Dr....

Dr. Brad Spellberg, an infectious disease expert at Harbor UCLA Medical Center says there is no current teatment for CRKP bacteria — and there might not be any in the future either. County health officials warn the elderly are especially at risk of CRKP infections. (Getty Images) “There’s been a complete collapse in the development of new antibiotics over the last decade…and in the next decade there isn’t going to be anything that becomes available that’s going to be able to treat these bacteria,” said Spellberg. Medical expert Dr. David Baron of Primary Caring in Malibu cautions hospital visitors that...

A new superbug that is resistant to even the most powerful antibiotics has entered UK hospitals, experts warn. They say bacteria which make an enzyme called NDM-1 travelled back with NHS patients who had gone abroad to countries like India and Pakistan for treatments such as cosmetic surgery. Although there have only been about 50 cases identified in the UK so far, scientists fear it will go global. Tight surveillance and new drugs are needed says Lancet Infectious Diseases. NDM-1 can exist inside different bacteria, like E.coli, and it makes them resistant to one of the most powerful groups of...