‘NIGHTMARE’ SUPERBUG FOUND IN PENNSYLVANIA

The superbug that doctors have been dreading has reached the U.S.

For the first time, researchers have found a person in America carrying bacteria resistant to antibiotics of last resort, an alarming development that the top U.S. public health official says could mean “the end of the road” for antibiotics.

The antibiotic-resistant strain was found last month in the urine of a 49-year-old Pennsylvania woman. Defense Department researchers determined that she carried a strain of E. coli resistant to the antibiotic colistin. Colistin is the antibiotic of last resort for particularly dangerous types of superbugs, including a family of bacteria known as CRE, which health officials have dubbed “nightmare bacteria.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has called CRE among the country’s most urgent public health threats.

“It basically shows us that the end of the road isn’t very far away for antibiotics — that we may be in a situation where we have patients in our intensive-care units, or patients getting urinary tract infections for which we do not have antibiotics,” said CDC director Tom Frieden.