Superbug: Hypervirulent KPC Created In Lab

Highly virulent and nearly completely resistant to antibiotics, a pathogen that occurred in nature at least once and created with shocking ease in the lab poses a "catastrophic threat" to the U.S. health care system, the lead investigator of the research tells Hospital Infection Control & Prevention.

Chiang and colleagues combined a carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) enzyme Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase (KPC) -- which has increased dramatically in the U.S. -- with a highly virulent but drug susceptible isolate of K. pneumonia from Asia. The resulting conjugated microorganism retained the high drug resistance of the KPC and the full virulence of the Asian K. pneumoniae isolate.

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Superbug: Hypervirulent KPC Created In Lab, Reported In Nature

Source: Advanced