Steffanie Strathdee, distinguished professor of medicine and associate dean of global health sciences at the University of California, San Diego, was confronted with an antibiotic-resistant infection in 2015. A man who had developed pancreatitis, an inflammation of the pancreas, was the subject of the investigation. There was a sac in the man's abdomen that had probably been there for months. Acinetobacter baumannii, a bacterium that tops the World Health Organization's priority list of pathogens for which new antibiotics are critical, was found in the pseudocyst. He was desperate to find a solution that would save the man's life. This wasn't just any patient, it was important to her. The man was her husband.
Things started to go wrong for the couple while they were in Egypt. A romantic meal under the stars aboard a cruise ship on their way to Luxor was the last meal they had before they left. Through the night, he vomited. He was keeping me up and I thought he had food poisoning. The diagnosis of acute pancreatitis was made after a trip to the local clinic as the night turned to morning. The pseudocyst, which was about the size of a football and full of murky brown liquid, was discovered in Germany. The results of a sample were worrying.
The implications of the test results weren't immediately apparent. She studied A. baumannii when she was a student at her undergraduate microbiology school. She says that back then, it was seen as a "really weak" organisms. Abaumannii has become a much more dangerous threat due to the rise of antimicrobial resistance. Iraqibacter has gained the nickname "Iraqibacter" in the US because of its prevalence among soldiers who have been wounded in Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries. Many infections are multidrug-resistant or even pandrug-resistant due to the fact that it is particularly deft at gaining resistance through multiple mechanisms. It's something of a kleptomaniac. It is a great way to steal antimicrobial resistance genes from otherbacteria.
A sensitivity test showed that Patterson's infection was highly drug resistant. He was taken to the intensive care unit in San Diego. In one sense, Strathdee and Patterson had everything on their side: They were back on home turf, and the leading experts treating their infections were friends. The head of infectious diseases at UCSD, Robert "Chip" Schooley, had been offering advice from the beginning of the illness over the phone and then in person. There wasn't much to be optimistic about with the infections becoming resistant to antibiotics. Surgery was not an option because the pseudocyst was still there and there was too great a risk that the infection would get into the bloodstream.
He was getting sicker over time. He was put in a drain in his abdomen to remove infections, but the drain slipped and thebacteria spread to his bloodstream, causing him to go into a coma. Thebacteria were all over him after that. He was in a coma after his organs failed. He had been climbing into pyramids and jumping onto boats and now he was fighting for his life. She says it was like a cruel joke.
Strathdee decided to leave no stone unturned in her search for a cure for her husband. She said she did what anyone would do. I went to the internet.
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