Science Alert In spite of having plagued humans for millennia, typhoid fever is rarely considered in developed countries today. But this ancient threat is still very much a danger in our modern world.
According to research published in 2022, the bacterium that causes typhoid fever is evolving extensive drug resistance, and is rapidly replacing strains that aren’t resistant.
Currently, antibiotics are the only way to effectively treat typhoid, which is caused by the bacterium Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi (S Typhi). Yet over the past three decades, the bacterium’s resistance to oral antibiotics has been growing and spreading.
In their study, researchers sequenced the genomes of 3,489 S Typhi strains contracted from 2014 to 2019 in Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and India, and found a rise in extensively drug-resistant (XDR) Typhi.