Scientists discover 5,000-year-old bacteria resistant to modern antibiotics

Scientists have discovered that a bacteria trapped in an ice cave for 5,000 years is resistant to several modern antibiotics.

The bacteria was found in the Scarisoara Ice Cave in Romania, where researchers drilled into a 25-metre ice core representing some 13,000 years of frozen history.

The research was published in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology.

To avoid contamination, ice samples were carefully stored and transported to the laboratory while still frozen. From the ice, scientists isolated a strain of bacteria called Psychrobacter SC65A.3.

Although thousands of years old, the strain was found to resist 10 antibiotics commonly used today to treat serious infections.

These include drugs such as rifampicin, vancomycin and ciprofloxacin, the study found.

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“The 10 antibiotics to which we found resistance are widely used in oral and injectable therapies used to treat a variety of serious bacterial infections in clinical practice,” Cristina Purcarea, senior scientist at the Bucharest Institute of Biology of the Romanian Academy, said in a press release.

The researchers tested the ancient strain against 28 antibiotics from 10 drug classes and identified more than 100 genes related to antibiotic resistance.

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“The study of microbes such as Psychrobacter SC65A.3 recovered from ancient ice cave deposits reveals how antibiotic resistance evolved naturally in the environment, long before modern antibiotics were used,” Purcarea said.

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According to the researchers, the findings suggest that antibiotic resistance existed in nature long before the development of modern medicines.

The strain also showed resistance to drugs such as trimethoprim, clindamycin and metronidazole, which are used to treat infections of the lungs, urinary tract, skin and reproductive system.

Limitations of the study

The study examined only one bacterial strain from a cave sample, and there is no evidence that the ancient microbe is infecting people or spreading currently, the researchers noted.

The experts also noted that Psychrobacter is an environmental bacteria that does not have clinical antibiotic “breakpoints,” which are clear cutoff numbers that tell doctors whether a bacteria is officially “resistant” to an antibiotic.

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Because this environmental bacteria has no established clinical testing standards, its laboratory-measured resistance cannot be interpreted in the same way that doctors classify dangerous hospital superbugs.