Tough little critters

Disease bacteria have taken just a year to develop resistance to the latest
antibiotics. Linezolid was developed to fight “superbugs” such as Staphylococcus
aureus and Enterococcus faecium
(New Scientist, 28 August 1999, p 21),
and was
approved in the US in April 2000. But when Ronald Gonzales and his colleagues at
the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Chicago tested E. faecium from
five patients they found that in every case the bacteria had already built up a
resistance to linezolid (The Lancet, vol 357, p 1179).