SEVERAL strains of the MRSA superbug are becoming resistant to the last-resort antibiotic, vancomycin. “The problem is much more serious than was previously thought,” says Mark Enright of the University of Bath, UK.
Until now to resistance to vancomycin was thought to be emerging in only one type of the MRSA bacterium. But when Enright’s team studied 101 samples of MRSA known to be at least partly resistant to vancomycin, from eight countries, they found that vancomycin resistance is evolving in all five major types of MRSA (Emerging Infectious Diseases, vol 10, p 855).
If vancomycin fails, the number…
