LONDON—Health experts renewed their warnings Thursday that a new form of superbug that gives bacteria the power to resist virtually all known antibiotics is spreading quickly, posing a global health threat.
The World Health Organisation Thursday issued a plea for collective action to fight new superbugs like the New Delhi metallobeta-lactamase, or NDM-1 for short, warning that the threat is spreading fast.
The NDM-1 enzyme destroys carbapenems, an important group of antibiotics used for difficult infections in hospitals, and has been found in a wide variety of bacterial types. New research published Thursday in the U.K. medical publication "The Lancet" shows NDM-1 is widespread outside the hospital environment in Delhi, India and is circulating in bacteria that inhabit drains and tap water, owing to sewage contamination. British researchers last August reported that infections involving NDM-1 had been found in patients in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Britain.
The danger is acute because the pipeline of new antibiotics is essentially empty. Some experts warn health-care provision is in danger of reverting back to a pre-antibiotic era in which hip replacements, care of pre-term babies and advanced cancer treatment are no longer possible.
"So much of modern medicine—from gut surgery to cancer treatment, to transplants—depends on our ability to treat infection. If resistance destroys that ability then the whole edifice of modern medicine crumbles," David Livermore, director of antibiotic-resistance monitoring at the U.K.'s Health Protection Agency said in a statement.
Over the past three decades only two new classes of antibacterial medicines have been discovered, compared to 11 in the previous 50 years.
"We have to recognize that even if we can increase these numbers, the task will never be complete because our most recently approved and most effective drugs will gradually decline in efficacy and we will need to develop new antibiotics to replace them," AstraZeneca PLC Chief Executive David Brennan said in a prepared address Thursday for The WHO World Health Day, marking the founding of the Geneva-based body.
In the U.S., hospital-acquired, drug-resistant bacterial infections kill 63,000 patients each year and cost $34 billion. In the E.U., multi-drug-resistant bacteria cause about 400,000 infections a year and at least 25,000 deaths, and generate costs of €1.5 billion ($2.15 billion), industry figures show.
One underlying problem is a lack of financial incentives to tempt pharmaceutical companies to invest in researching and developing new antibiotics. Experts say it's not viable for drug companies that spend millions developing a new antibiotic medicine to be then told by regulators to hold it in reserve for the next emergency.
"Discovery needs to be underpinned by new financial mechanisms that allow companies to receive a return on their investment in new drugs, while limiting their use to situations of greatest need," Mr. Brennan said in his prepared remarks.
Write to Sten Stovall at sten.stovall@dowjones.com
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