Feinberg Prof. Alan Hauser discovered that new strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria cause less severe infections than previously thought, the University announced Friday.
The bacteria, Klebsiella pneumoniae, are commonly found in the intestines and can cause infections when introduced elsewhere in the body.
Klebsiella pneumoniae are highly resistant to antibiotics, and a strain discovered in Asia in the mid-1980s can cause serious infections. New strains of the bacteria discovered in Germany in 2019 are causing concern in the scientific community, according to a recent Northwestern Medicine study.
“There’s a lot of concern about these strains because not only do they cause these aggressive infections, but they’re very difficult to treat,” Hauser said in the release. “These strains are called convergent strains.”
In his recent study published in Nature Communications, Hauser examined 12 convergent strains that were labeled as highly aggressive and antibiotic resistant in previous research.
After testing the bacteria on mice, Hauser’s team found that 11 of the 12 strains identified as dangerous produced milder infections than anticipated.
The team’s long-term goal is to develop novel drugs that would prevent an infection of Klebsiella pneumoniae, Hauser said in the release.
“Certainly, we still need to be worried about these convergent strains; they are still a problem,” Hauser said in the release. “They still have the potential to cause very serious and difficult-to-treat infections. It’s just that perhaps many of these convergent strains may not cause as severe infections as we originally thought.”
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