In the past few years, the existence of antibiotic-resistant viruses and disease strains have turned into a major health concern, as these would mean facing some of the greatest threats without arguably the most important tool medicine has developed in the past century; and now the scare grows even further as scientists announce the existence of a typhoid fever superbug.
Antibiotic-resistant viruses, also called "superbugs," have become one of the world's main health concerns in the past few years, so much so that there's an ongoing campaign to keep antibiotics away from everyday foods (particularly chicken, as a few major companies have vowed to cut antibiotics from poultry within the next couple of years), but it hasn't stopped the typhoid fever superbug.
According to Reuters, a team of some 74 scientists in almost two dozen countries announced that there's currently a typhoid fever superbug spreading worldwide that's turning into an increasingly big health threat.
The typhoid fever superbug study was published in the latest issue of Nature Genetics last Monday, under the name "Phylogeographical analysis of the dominant multidrug-resistant H58 clade of Salmonella Typhi identifies inter- and intracontinental transmission events."
Time Magazine reports that researchers involved in the typhoid fever superbug discovery reached their conclusions by sequencing genomes of a total 1,832 samples of the bacteria that causes typhoid fever, Salmonella Typhi, collected in a total of 63 countries between 1992 and 2013, discovering that a total of 47 percent of these strains (found in 21 countries from the 63 studied) came from H58, a drug-resistant family.
Seemingly, the strain likely emerged in South Asia some thirty years ago and has been spreading ever since, most notably to Southeast Asia, Western Asia, East Africa, Fiji and West Africa.
"Vaccinations are not currently in widespread use in typhoid-endemic countries," said Kathryn Holt, one of the typhoid fever superbug's leading authors, according to Yahoo! Lifestyle. "Instead, antibiotics are commonly used as a preventive measure. As a consequence, there is a rise in antibiotic resistance to many pathogens and in particular a resurgence of multidrug-resistant typhoid has been observed in some areas, including parts of Africa."
