It's hard to take precautions against something you haven't seen. Like boxing with shadows, you never really know it's there or even if it's staring back at you while you're staring at it. The unknown, and to an extent, the unseen, is a frightening enemy since many of us know next to nothing about how to deal with it. One can only speculate as to what would happen if even our last stand was thwarted against such unseen peril. Unfortunately, over the past few years, something that has the ability to do such a thing has been discovered, and scientists have been working hard to find a new way to stop it dead in its tracks. The superbugs have been in hiding, and over their time they have been growing more resistant to all our advances.
CREs, or carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae, are what Arstechnica.com calls to refer to these superbugs that have found a way to be resistant to our discoveries of internal medicine and breaking past antibiotics. What is more frightening, perhaps, is that not only can they break past our last line of defense, but this is merely a glimpse of what they can really do, meaning that our research on the superbug's capability is barely scratching the surface. The CREs have been discovered to have different species, different molecular backgrounds, and more. Reports show that the reason for them being so deceptive, for them to spread, and for being able to evolve in such a fashion suggests that they are highly adaptable, allowing them to be silently transmitted even amongst the healthy public.
Despite the impact of superbugs being such a problem, CNN has claimed that scientists are still actively researching in order to combat it or stop it from spreading in the first place. Researchers at the University of Leeds are currently working on technology that can be used to determine whether an infection is viral or bacterial, and these technologies can be used by family clinics or general practitioners. Thinking that prevention is better than the cure, scientists continue to research on methods for preventing the spread rather than using antibiotics to cure them. While research is still to be conducted, it should not be forgotten that preventing the spread of disease is just as, if not more important than curing it.
