"Scientists find that all 93 strains of bacteria collected from deep inside Lechuguilla Cave at Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico are already resistant to at least one of the antibiotics we use to fight infections."
"No place on Earth demonstrates the resilience or inventiveness of life quite like Lechuguilla Cave, whose subterranean tunnels stretch for 130 miles through Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico.
Deep in the cave's most arid recesses, deprived of all sunlight and mostly starved of life-giving water, a lush garden of bacteria grows. Untouched by humans for all of their 4 million years, these strains of bacteria thrive on the harsh minerals of the geological formations to which they cling and fend off other life forms that would prey on them.
It is a simple life. But new research suggests it could tell us volumes about the medicines doctors rely upon to combat infection and why, increasingly, they are failing.
Scientists who collected 93 strains of bacteria from the forbidding depths of Lechuguilla found that all were resistant to at least one of the antibiotics that modern medicine uses to fight bacterial infections and some were resistant to at least 14. In addition, virtually all of the 26 antibiotics tested as part of the study proved useless in killing at least one of the strains of bacteria collected."
Melissa Healy reports for the Los Angeles Times April 11, 2012.
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