Deadly Bacteria Responsible for 50 Million Infections Each Year Could Become Immune to Drugs That Treat It

One of the most common bacterial illnesses in the world could soon become harder to treat, biologists warn after the findings of their latest study.

Researchers at the Santa Fe Institute, in New Mexico, found that the bacteria Escherichia coli — known as E. coli — is remarkably adept at evolving to survive exposure to antibiotics. This could pose a major problem for doctors and patients hoping to fight E. coli infections in the future.

“In essence, this study suggests that bacteria like E. coli may be more adept at evolving resistance to antibiotics than we initially thought, and this has broader implications for understanding how various systems in evolutionary biology, chemistry, and other fields adapt and evolve,” Andreas Wagner, Ph.D., a Swiss researcher who contributed to the study, said in a statement.

For their research, published Friday in the journal Science, they wanted to test the concept of a “rugged fitness landscape” in evolutionary biology. Basically, researchers wanted to determine whether organisms such as E. coli that have not optimally evolved over the years could ever reach their biological “peak” — or its strongest and most optimal form for replicating.

Using CRISPR technology, they intentionally created the inefficient, or “rugged”, fitness landscape among bacteria. Out of the 260,000 mutations they intentionally introduced, 75% of the bacteria evolved in the lab environment gained traits that would increase their resistance to antibiotics.

The findings suggest that the bacteria has better evolutionary fitness than previously believed—a worrying prospect.

E. coli is responsible for nearly 50 million infections in the U.S. each year, according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). It is responsible for 3,000 deaths in America every year, mostly children under the age of 5 and seniors aged 65 and older.

It usually causes infections after a person consumes contaminated food, including raw beef or milk.

Global health experts fear that many bacteria that cause infections in humans could evolve to resist the antibiotics used to treat them in hospitals around the world. The World Health Organization describes antibiotic resistance as one of the world’s top public health threats.

A majority of E. coli infections, however, can be combated with limited medical intervention. Symptoms of infection usually include cramps, vomiting and diarrhea. However, in severe cases a patient may be prescribed antibiotics to deal with the illness.