Joel Roberson was working on a plumbing job in May when a small spider bit him. Within a few days, his leg swelled, and fever set in. The bite caused the Washington man to be infected with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, according to reports in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Surgery eventually removed the infection. Although Roberson lived, he is no longer able to pay his medical insurance and had to cancel it.

MSRA, which steals most of the headlines in the world of superbugs, is just one bacterium. Rift Gold There are many more microbes that are showing resistance to drugs, yet there are virtually no novel antibiotics coming on the market to fight the new generation of superbugs.

Commercial antibiotics have saved countless lives since their introduction in the 1940s, but today, bacteria that were once killed by effective drugs have grown dangerously resistant to some or all of the prescribed medications. The World Health Organization has identified antimicrobial resistance as one of the top three threats to human health.

There is a small but serious group of drug-resistant bacteria that are showing up in hospitals with greater frequency, according to Dr. Daniel Sexton, professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases at Duke University Medical Center and director of the Duke Infection Control Outreach Network.

The most common infections include Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Klebsiella pneumoniae, which are all gram-negative bacteria defined by a thinner, two-layer cell wall.

"Every year, there has been a steady increase," says Sexton. "They used to be considered nuisance infections, but now, they're resistant. All of a sudden routine infections take on a whole new infection."

Although the drug-resistant strains make up a relatively small number of microbes, they are some of the most common bacteria that naturally populate the gastrointestinal tract.

The result is that immunocompromised patients that might have once undergone surgery, gotten a urinary tract infection and been treated with antibiotics could now be infected with the same bacteria. However, if it is a drug-resistant strain, it could prove dangerous or even deadly for the patient. Before, a pill might have cured the infection, but now it could take intravenous therapy and drugs that can affect the kidneys, according to Sexton. Once a strain develops even moderate resistance, researchers are finding the strain can morph into being extremely resistant quickly.

Drug resistance is not limited to a few strains of bacteria in the hospital. Just last year, Iranian doctors identified strains of completely drug-resistant tuberculosis. RIFT Platinum Neisseria gonorrhoeae, resistant to penicillin, tetracycline, and multiple other drugs, was detected in Southeast Asia during the 1960s and 1970s and has been an emerging public health issue in the United States. Research from DICON has also shown that Clostridium difficile are surpassing MRSA infections in community hospitals.

The answer to drug resistance is not simple. The overprescription of antibiotics is thought to play a role, as is the high level of antibiotics used in animals in commercial farming.

As bacteria have naturally developed resistance, the pharmaceutical world has not answered back with new drugs. rift gold There has been a paltry number of new antibiotics in the past few decades and not many on the horizon, despite calls from the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the World Health Organization.

Even without new medication to fight the microbes, Sexton says that there is one clear way to reduce infection: hygiene.

"Hand washing every time, every day," he says. "And that's fundamental, because it works."

Many hospitals, including Duke University Medical Center, have seen infection rates drop in recent years with more vigilant hygiene. Patients should demand meticulous hygiene anytime they are in a hospital setting, especially if they are immunocompromised.

Although there are measures that can reduce the spread of infection and therefore the risk, many experts, including Sexton, feel the problem will get worse before it gets better.

"The extent of the problem is expanding," says Sexton. "The geographic range is expanding and the implications are getting bigger. RIFT Platinum The implications of these drug resistant infections will become more commonplace."