Health officials in Scotland have announced the country's first detection of antibiotic-resistant bacteria harboring the MCR-1 gene.
One isolate was also resistant to beta-lactams, fluoroquinolones, and florfenicol.
Screening of 1,427 bacterial isolates collected from patients in a large Hong Kong hospital during roughly 1-month period in December 2015 yielded 5 that were positive for MCR-1, a gene linked to resistance to colistin, a last-line antibiotic. A team from Hong Kong reported their findings yesterday in a letter yesterday to Emerging Infectious Diseases.
The MCR-1 gene was most prevalent in poultry, with 10.7% of turkey isolates and 5.6% of broiler isolates testing positive.
Italian researchers, meanwhile, said they detected a variant of the MCR-1 gene.
Researchers discover a new gene distinct from MCR-1 that can confer colistin resistance and dub it MCR-2.
In Portugal, 11 human samples tested positive, and in Brazil the isolates were from poultry not given polymyxins.
Other reports noted detections in hospital patients, sick chickens, and retail meat samples.
Steps include added lab capacity, a sequencing database, and boosts for drug development.
The MCR-1 resistance gene, which has now been detected in at least 20 countries and renders bacteria resistant to the last-resort antibiotic colistin, poses a "substantial public health risk" to the European Union and must be combatted on a range of fronts, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said today in its latest rapid risk assessment.