A NEW antibiotic-resistant superbug has emerged in Australia causing the death of one man and the infection of 50 others.
The deadly new disease has alarmed infectious diseases experts because it is acquired in the community rather than in hospital.
A young Queensland man, who died in Royal Brisbane Hospital's intensive care unit last winter, has been identified as the first to die from the infection, which is a strain of golden staph.
The man was admitted suffering from septicemia but failed to respond to flucloxicillin, a penicillin-type antibiotic.
Forty-eight hours later, blood tests showed he had the new, virulent "Queensland" strain of golden staph. Although his antibiotics were changed, it was too late to save him.
Specialists contacted by The Australian said the emergence of the new disease, which has been diagnosed in about 50 people in southeast Queensland and northern NSW, had provided alarming new evidence of growing antibiotic resistance.
Wendy Munckhof, an infectious diseases specialist at Brisbane's Princess Alexandra Hospital, has led the study of the new disease, which is thought to be contracted through a breach in the skin.
Dr Munckhof said it represented a "wake-up call" on antibiotic resistance. Ronan Murray, an infectious diseases specialist at Royal Perth Hospital, said the "Armageddon scenario" of infections not responding to a whole range of antibiotics was "still a way off", but he described the growth of drug-resistant bacteria as "very worrying".
He confirmed two cases of the new disease had been diagnosed in WA, although it was not known if they had been brought by a Queenslander, or emerged spontaneously.
He said of the new strain: "We will see more and more of this, and first-line antibiotics won't be any use, and more and more expensive ones will have to be used."
Two new antibiotics were recently introduced to counter bacteria resistance: linezolid costs more than $100 a day and Synercid costs more than $700 a day.
There is wide concern among specialists and health officials that inappropriate prescription of antibiotics has accelerated bacteria resistance. Last year, doctors wrote 10.9 million scripts for antibiotics costing $130 million.
Anton Peleg, a former Brisbane infectious diseases doctor, last month presented a research paper on the Queensland strain.
Co-written with Dr Munckhof and researchers from the Queensland University of Technology, the paper says the disease is "highly virulent and can cause fatal infections in healthy young people".
Dr Peleg, who now works at Melbourne's Alfred Hospital, told The Australian most golden staph infections presented with a skin or soft-tissue infection, but the new strain was producing blood infections that in some cases could lead to death.
It is a major problem in hospitals, particularly after operations, and its spread has been associated with issues of hospital healthcare.
But the emergence of the community-acquired strain alarms doctors because the infection has now spread outside a hospital setting.
Federal and state governments are already struggling with the challenge of hospital-acquired MRSA, and new initiatives have been introduced to record infection data, and establish new guidelines on antibiotic use.
The Australian
