Scientists fear that a post-antibiotic world is upon us now that bacteria is becoming increasingly resistant to drugs.
Such antibiotic-resistant bacteria could take medicine back to the dark ages and allow common infections to become deadly again while threatening cancer therapies and surgeries that heavily
depend on antibiotics, the BBC News reported.
Chinese scientists recently identified bacteria that are able to avoid colistin, considered a drug of last resort, in patients and livestock.
A recent report in the Lancet Infectious Diseases journal showed resistance in a fifth of animals tested, as well as 15 percent of raw meat samples and 16 patients.
A mutation on the MCR-1 gene prevented colistin from killing the bacteria, the research found.
"Our findings emphasize the urgent need for coordinated global action in the fight against pan-drug-resistant Gram-negative bacteria," the Lancet study said.
Agence France-Presse reported that some experts have expressed concern about the results of the research reported in the Lancet.
"This is a worrying report, as polymyxins are often the last-resort antibiotic to treat serious infections," Laura Piddock, a professor of microbiology at the University of Birmingham in England, told AFP.
Piddock added that drug resistance in diseases like tuberculosis, for example, could "likely pave the way for it to spread throughout the world."
AFP reported that the World Health Organization said that 480,000 people contracted multi-drug resistant tuberculosis in 2014, and 190,000 of them died from it.
Piddock told the BBC News that new drugs and methods are needed to improve the effectiveness of antibiotics.
"Hopefully the post-antibiotic era is not upon us yet," she said. "However, this is a wake-up call to the world."
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