SAN DIEGO — The frightening spread of antibiotic-resistant superbugs threatens to return medicine to the pre-antibiotic era, with the return of deadly infectious diseases long thought vanquished.
Each year, more than 2 million people in the United States get antibiotic-resistant infections, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At least 23,000 of them die. Unless breakthroughs are achieved, that toll will keep rising.
If a new version of an antibiotic of last resort lives up to its promise, that date with doom may be averted. A study on this bolstered form of vancomycin by scientists at the Scripps Research Institute was released Monday.