Biosecurity

What You Need to Know About the Deadly 'Superbug' Infection Resistant to All FDA-Approved Antibiotics

The rise of drug-resistant bacterial "superbugs" have been a concern of public health officials for years, but the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported a worse-case scenario -- a woman with a bacterial infection that was resistant to all FDA-approved treatments.

A Nevada woman died in September after being infected with type of drug-resistant bacteria called Klebsiella pneumonaiae that was resistant to all antibiotics available in the U.S., the CDC reported on Friday.

The woman was in her 70's when she arrived at hospital in August 2016 with signs of sepsis. She had been in India years before and had been treated for a broken leg and bone infection, according to the CDC. After doing tests, her doctors found the bacteria -- which belonged to a class of drug-resistant bugs called carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) -- were resistant to all forms of FDA-approved antibiotics. The patient died in September after going into septic shock, according to the CDC.