NIH superbug claims 7th victim: "The NIH obtained an experimental antibiotic, but it also failed."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/nih-superbug-claims-7th-victim/2012/09/14/09b3742e-fe9b-11e1-b153-218509a954e1_story.html

NIH superbug claims 7th victim

By Brian Vastag and Lena H. Sun

"A deadly, drug-resistant superbug outbreak that began last summer at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center claimed its seventh victim Sept. 7, when a seriously ill boy from Minnesota succumbed to a bloodstream infection, officials said Friday.

The boy was the 19th patient at the research hospital to contract an antibiotic-resistant strain of the bacterium Klebsiella pneumoniae that arrived in August 2011 with a New York woman who needed a lung transplant. But his case marked the first new infection of this superbug at NIH since January — a worrisome signal that the bug persists inside the huge brick-and-glass federal facility in Bethesda.

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The boy’s superbug originally appeared vulnerable to one antibiotic, but after a week of therapy, the infection grew impervious to that drug, too, Gallin said. The NIH obtained an experimental antibiotic, but it also failed."