Plague Bacterium Displays Antibiotic Resistance

The bacterium that causes plague has been found in one case to display resistance to antibiotics used to counter the disease, researchers said in a study published last week (see GSN, Aug. 3, 2005).

No vaccine exists to treat plague, which is considered a potential bioterrorism agent and continues to occur naturally after killing 200 million people worldwide throughout history.  However, antibiotics have proven effective in treating the bacterium Yersinia pestis.

Plague bacteria collected in Madagascar were found to carry DNA segments known as plasmids that contain the “genetic ability to disable antibiotics, including multidrug resistance (MDR) sequences,” according to the Institute for Genomic Research in Maryland.

Those plasmids can be transferred from one type of bacteria to another, and have been found in the United States in salmonella and E.coli on beef, chicken, port and turkey.  The findings indicate the antibiotic resistance could spread to additional bacteria for plague or other pathogens.

“Our data imply that high levels of MDR in the causative agent of plague may rapidly evolve naturally, and present a vital biomedical, public health and biodefense threat,” researchers from France, Madagascar and the United States said in the study (Institute for Genomic Research release, March 20).

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