Drug-resistant germ spreading

STUDIES SHOW DEADLY STRAIN MENACING HOSPITALS

ATLANTA — A deadly bacterial illness commonly seen in people on antibiotics appears to be growing more common — even in patients not taking such drugs, according to a report published Thursday in a federal health journal.

In another article in the New England Journal of Medicine, health officials said samples of the same bacterium taken from eight U.S. hospitals show it is mutating to become even more resistant to antibiotics.

‘‘I don’t want to scare people away from using antibiotics. . . . But it’s concerning, and we need to

respond,’’ said L. Clifford McDonald, an author of both articles and an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The bacterium is

Clostridium difficile, also known as Cdiff. The germ is becoming a regular menace in hospitals and nursing homes, and last year it was blamed for 100 deaths over 18 months at a hospital in Quebec.

The article published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report focused on cases involving 33 otherwise healthy people that were reported since 2003 in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey and New Hampshire.

C- diff is found in the colon and can cause diarrhea and a more serious intestinal condition known as colitis. It is spread by spores in feces.

C-diff has grown resistant to certain antibiotics that work against other colon bacteria. The result: When patients take those antibiotics, particularly clindamycin, competing bacteria die off and C-diff explodes.

The New England Journal of Medicine article looked at C-diff samples taken from 2000 to 2003 from eight hospitals in six states.

The researchers found that a virulent strain of C-diff rarely seen before 2000 accounted for more than half of the samples taken in the hospitals.