Professor Jian-Hua Liu, from South China Agricultural University in Guangzhou, said: “These are extremely worrying results. The polymyxins (colistin and polymyxin B) were the last class of antibiotics in which resistance was incapable of spreading from cell to cell.
“Until now, colistin resistance resulted from chromosomal mutations, making the resistance mechanism unstable and incapable of spreading to other bacteria.
“Our results reveal the emergence of the first polymyxin resistance gene that is readily passed between common bacteria such as Escherichia coli and Klesbsiella pneumoniae, suggesting that the progression from extensive drug resistance to pan-drug resistance is inevitable.”
I work with a woman whose son ended up with pneumonia and was put on a strong antibiotic. He then developed a bacterial infection in his stomach from it and had to get a drug that cost $1000 for the liquid cure or $55 in pill form This clearly demonstrates how resistant these bacteria have become. In my own case, I was on three rounds of antibiotics before I finally decided to stop taking them and started taking probiotics. The antibiotics made my head fuzzy, killed my appetite, and made me feel like I was having an out of body experience. And a number of my colleagues had similar symptoms.