Salmonella - New Antibiotic-resistant Strains

New Antibiotic-resistant Strains

Non-typhoidal salmonella (iNTS) Africa, a new form of the germ, emerged in the southeast of the continent 52 years ago, followed by a second wave, which came out of central Africa 17 years later. The second wave of iNTS began 35 years ago, possibly in the Congo Basin, and early in the event picked up a gene making it resistant to the antibiotic chloramphenicol. There is an urgency to develop an effective salmonella vaccine because of the recent outbreaks in Africa of antibiotic-resistant strains of the food-borne bacteria that is killing hundreds of thousands of people there, as well as the heavy annual worldwide death toll each year. People with HIV are greatly affected. A recently identified set of antigens (molecules in the invading bacteria that trigger an immune response) that is common to both mice and humans, provide a foundation for developing a protective salmonella vaccine that could be on the market as early as 2016. This is good news because no new, effective antibiotics are on the horizon. In sub-Saharan the variant is the cause of an enigmatic disease called invasive non-typhoidal salmonella (iNTS), which affects Africa far more than other continents. Its genetic makeup is evolving into a more typhoid-like bacteria, able to efficiently spread around the human body.