Invasion of the Superbugs.

• Author: Potenza, Alessandra
• Position: SCIENCE

Drug-resistant bacteria are killing thousands of Americans every year. Can they be stopped?

One morning in 2011, Joseph Paz woke up with a pain in his right leg. A basketball and track-and-field athlete from Las Cruces, New Mexico, he chalked it up to a strain from cross country practice and took some painkillers. But the next day, the 16-year-old junior at Mayfield High School was in such agony that his mom drove him to the E.R.

Tests showed he had a bone infection in his left knee and a 2-foot blood clot in his right leg. He was diagnosed with MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), an aggressive bacterium that causes deadly infections. Paz was hospitalized and given three antibiotics.

But the drugs didn't work. The infection quickly spread to his heart and, with his condition turning critical, he was transferred to El Paso, Texas, to undergo open-heart surgery.

"I was deathly afraid that this was going to kill him," says Joseph's aunt, Conchita Paz, who's a physician. "I know that MRSA can be deadly."

MRSA is one of the most lethal "superbugs" that are increasingly worrying scientists and health officials. Superbugs are a type of bacteria that can fight off the most powerful antibiotics that are supposed to destroy them. They can cause life-threatening blood infections, incurable cases of pneumonia, and flesh-eating diseases that can't be treated. They're growing in number and power, infecting more than 2 million Americans each year and killing at least 23,000--more than AIDS--according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Recently, a superbug outbreak at a University of California hospital in Los Angeles contaminated almost 200 people and killed two. And last month, 32-year-old New York Giants tight end Daniel Fells was hospitalized and underwent seven surgeries because of a MRSA infection in his foot.

"We're in a crisis in the U.S.," says Helen Boucher, an infectious-disease specialist at Tufts Medical Center in Boston. "We face antibiotic-resistant infections every day."

And it's not just here in the U.S. Superbugs are infecting increasing numbers of people all over the world, killing an estimated 700,000 every year. In India alone, a superbug epidemic in 2013 killed almost 60,000 infants. The World Health Organization has called superbugs a "major global threat" that could have catastrophic effects (see "An Unstoppable Plague?" p. 11).

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