Mar 22, 2012  Antibiotic Resistance: The 5 Riskiest Superbugs. If the bug invades a wound, it can cause an infection that's minor and localized, as in a pimple,. CRISPR Used To Modify Viruses And Create New Weapon Against Superbugs: Shots - Health News Superbugs are bacteria that can beat modern medicine's most powerful drugs. So doctors are racing to.

For the first time ever, the World Health Organization has drawn up a list of the highest priority needs for new antibiotics — marching orders, it hopes, for the pharmaceutical industry.The list, which was released Monday, enumerates 12 bacterial threats, grouping them into three categories: critical, high, and medium.“Antibiotic resistance is growing and we are running out of treatment options. If we leave it to market forces alone, the new antibiotics we most urgently need are not going to be developed in time,” said Dr. Marie-Paule Kieny, the WHO’s assistant director-general for health systems and innovation.“The pipeline is practically dry.”Notably missing from the list is the bacterium that causes. That was not included, Kieny said, because the need for new antibiotics to treat it has already been designated the highest priority.Kieny said the 12 bacteria were prioritized based on the level of drug resistance that already exists for each, the numbers of deaths they cause, the frequency with which people become infected with them outside of hospitals, and the burden these infections place on health care systems.Paradoxically, though, she and colleagues from the WHO could not provide an estimate of the annual number of deaths attributable to. The international disease code system does not currently include a code for antibiotic-resistant infections; it is being amended to include one.The critical pathogens are ones that cause severe infections and high mortality in hospital patients, Kieny said. While they are not as common as other drug-resistant infections, they are costly in terms of health care resources needed to treat infected patients and in lives lost.Three bacteria were listed as critical:. Acinetobacter baumannii bacteria that are resistant to important antibiotics called carbapenems.

Helen Branswell.Helen Branswell is STAT's infectious diseases and public health reporter. She comes from the Canadian Press, where she was the medical reporter for the past 15 years. Helen cut her infectious diseases teeth during Toronto's SARS outbreak in 2003 and spent the summer of 2004 embedded at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2010-11 she was a Nieman Global Health Fellow at Harvard, where she focused on polio eradication. Continue cpr after rosc. Warning: Helen asks lots of questions.Credit: Nick Higgins.