Acinetobacter Alley:Did they cure it or bury it?

It's been a few months since the last report on this super bug came out. The question is, did they cure it or bury the reports on it? We have a lot more wounded since then and I doubt they are all free of this.

Deadly mystery disease follows troops home
Infections seen in military hospitals in Iraq spread to U.S.
Jia-Rui Chong, Los Angeles Times

Sunday, October 7, 2007


The young American Army medic would not stop bleeding.

He had been put on a powerful regimen of antibiotics by doctors aboard the hospital ship Comfort in the Persian Gulf. But something was wrong.

He was in shock and bleeding from small pricks where nurses had placed intravenous lines. Red, swollen tissue from an active bacterial infection was expanding around his abdominal wound. His immune system was in overdrive.

How odd, thought Dr. Kyle Petersen, an infectious disease specialist. He knew of one injured Iraqi man with similar symptoms and a few days later encountered an Iraqi teenager with gunshot wounds in the same condition.

Within a few days, blood tests confirmed that the medic and the two wounded Iraqis were infected with an unusual bacterium, Acinetobacter baumannii.

This particular strain had a deadly twist. It was resistant to a dozen antibiotics. The medic survived, but by the time Petersen connected the dots, the two Iraqi patients were dead.

It was April 2003, early in the Iraq war - and 41/2 years later, scientists still are struggling to understand the medical mystery.

The three cases aboard the Comfort were the first of a stubborn outbreak that has spread to at least five other American military hospitals, including Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington and the Army's Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.

Hundreds of patients - the military says it has not tabulated how many - have been infected with the bacterium in their bloodstream, cerebrospinal fluid, bones or lungs. Many of them were troops wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan; others have been civilians infected after stays in military hospitals.

At least 27 people have died in military hospitals with Acinetobacter infections since 2003, although doctors are uncertain how many of the deaths actually were caused by the bacteria.

The rise in infections has been dramatic. In 2001 and 2002, Acinetobacter infections made up about 2 percent of admissions at the specialized burn unit at Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas. In 2003, the rate jumped to 6 percent, and then to 12 percent by 2005. Other military hospitals have reported similar levels.

In the early days of the war, there were so many infections in an intensive care unit on the Comfort that a nurse posted a sign: "Acinetobacter Alley." In two months, the bacterium was found in 44 of the 211 patients wounded in battle.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/07/MNEUSGV3A.DTL&feed=rss.news

Worrisome Infection in Wounded US Military

November 19, 2004 -- A bacterium named Acinetobacter baumannii is a relatively uncommon cause of infection, except among people with AIDS and other types of immune deficiency and in ICUs. Now there is a worrisome increase in the number of bloodstream infections due to this bacterium in US military hospitals where service members injured in Iraq, Kuwait, and Afghanistan are being treated.

Comments: During the Vietnam War, this bacterium was also the most common microorganism of its type (gram-negative bacteria) in traumatic wounds of the arms and legs, suggesting that environmental contamination of wounds is the likely source of the infection. This bacterium is common in both water and soil. Treatment of these infections can be difficult because the bacterium has intrinsic resistance to certain antibiotics and has acquired resistance to many others.

Everyone in Iraq and Afghanistan today faces risks not only of death and injuries but also severe life-threatening infections from this bacterium. If US military hospitals are having difficulty treating it, we cannot begin to imagine the situation for civilians injured and hospitalized in Iraq or Afghanistan. War brings with it the scourge of disease.
Barbara K. Hecht, Ph.D.Frederick Hecht, M.D.

Medical Editors, MedicineNet.com

http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=40718