Word: staphylococcus
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Plasmodium falciparum. Staphylococcus aureus. Streptococcus pneumoniae. Enterococcus faecium. Neisseria gonorrhoeae. The list of microbial scourges that have developed immunity to one or more of the drugs used to treat them is growing ever longer, and in a number of cases physicians are running out of options. In U.S. hospitals, more than 20% of all enterococcus infections, which include infections of the gastrointestinal tract, heart valve and blood, are now resistant to vancomycin, for many years the antibiotic of last resort. Even more worrisome, insensitivity to vancomycin--which nurses and physicians in intensive-care units refer...
Serendipity intervenes: in the London summer of 1928, an open window in a hospital lab lets in a spore that settles on a staphylococcus-culture dish left unwashed. A mold grows and contaminates the staphylococcus. The lab user returns. Because he's bacteriologist Alexander Fleming, and because his lab has not been cleaned, penicillin is discovered...