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"Super Bug" Danger
Increases
A story reported in December of 2000 by NBC News
carried the headline, "It’s a danger of staggering proportions. Every
year, one in 20 hospitalized Americans — 1.8 million people — develop
an infection, with 88,000 of them dying. The biggest threat:
“supergerms” resistant to antibiotics." The NBC report was
prompted by a new study from the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention that reported that samples of the deadly Streptococcus bacteria
that resist not only penicillin but also two other powerful antibiotics
jumped 64 per cent in only three years. The reason most commonly discussed
for these increases in antibiotic resistance is the adaptation of bacteria
to the over usage of the antibiotics themselves.
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