Scientists are bacteria is trapped Organisms that have lived in ice caves for 5,000 years are resistant to some modern antibiotics.
The bacterium was discovered in Romania’s Scalisoara Ice Cave, where researchers drilled a 25-metre ice core representing about 13,000 years of frozen history.
the study Published in the journal “Frontiers in Microbiology”.
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To prevent contamination, the ice samples were carefully stored and transported to the laboratory frozen. Scientists isolated a bacterial strain called Cyclobacter SC65A.3 from the ice.
Although thousands of years old, this strain turned out to be: Resists 10 types of antibiotics It is now commonly used to treat serious infections.
These include drugs such as rifampicin, vancomycin, and ciprofloxacin, the study found.
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“The 10 antibiotics we found resistance to are widely used in oral and injectable therapies used to treat a variety of serious diseases. bacterial infection in clinical practice,” Cristina Purcarea, a senior researcher at the Romanian Academy Bucharest Institute of Biology, said in a press release.
The researchers tested this ancient strain against 28 antibiotics from 10 different drugs and identified more than 100 genes associated with antibiotic resistance.
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“Studying microorganisms such as Cyclobacter SC65A.3 recovered from microorganisms thousands of years old” ice cave deposits “This reveals how antibiotic resistance evolved naturally in the environment long before modern antibiotics were used,” said Purcarea.
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The researchers say this finding suggests that antibiotic resistance existed in nature long before modern drugs were developed.
The strain was also resistant to drugs used for treatment, including trimethoprim, clindamycin, and metronidazole. lung infectionurinary tract, skin, reproductive system.
Although the study looked at only one bacterial strain from one cave sample, there is no evidence that the ancient microbes are currently infecting or disseminating people, the researchers noted.
Experts also pointed out that Cyclobacter is an environmental bacterium that has no clinical antibiotic “breakpoints.” Breakpoints are clear cutoff values that tell doctors whether a bacterium is officially “resistant” to an antibiotic.
Because this environmental bacteria is not colonized, Clinical testing standardsthat resistance measured in the laboratory cannot be interpreted in the same way that doctors classify dangerous hospital superbugs.
