Australian researchers are calling for a major new research effort to develop entirely new antibiotics to counter the growing threat posed by Acinetobacter bacterial infections, epiNewswire reported Monday, June 14, 2010.

“Acinetobacter (species) have risen from relative obscurity to be among the most important sources of hospital-acquired infections,” the team wrote in the current issue of Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews. “The driving force for this has been the remarkable ability of these organisms to acquire antibiotic resistance determinants, with some strains now showing resistance to every antibiotic in clinical use.”

Acinetobacter is also markedly resistant to disinfectants and desiccation, and spread more readily in the hospital environment than other drug-resistant species, recent studies have shown.

Reviewing recent genetic research, the team concludes the bacteria not only rapidly acquires drug-resistance genes from other bacteria in the environment, but is innately more resistant to existing classes of antibiotics — and to stress in general — than other bacteria.

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Lee Ann Torrans
ltorrans@gmail.com