Copyright
©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
Carbapenemases: A worldwide threat to antimicrobial therapy
José Miguel Sahuquillo-Arce, Grupo de investigación de infecciones respiratorias, Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria - Fundación para la Investigación Hospital La Fe., Torre A, 46026 Valencia, Spain
Alicia Hernández-Cabezas, Fernanda Yarad-Auad, Elisa Ibáñez-Martínez, Patricia Falomir-Salcedo, Alba Ruiz-Gaitán, Servicio de Microbiología, Hospital Universitari i Politécnic La Fe, 46009 Valencia, Spain
Author contributions: All authors contributed equally to this manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest: The authors declare they have no conflicts of interest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: José Miguel Sahuquillo-Arce, MD, Grupo de investigación de infecciones respiratorias, Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria - Fundación para la Investigación Hospital La Fe., Bulevar Sur, s/n, Hospital U. y P. La Fe, Torre A, Planta 6ª, 46026 Valencia, Spain. wadjur@hotmail.com
Telephone: +34-96-3862764
Received: July 29, 2014
Peer-review started: July 29, 2014
First decision: October 16, 2014
Revised: November 14, 2014
Accepted: November 27, 2014
Article in press: December 1, 2014
Published online: March 9, 2015
Peer-review started: July 29, 2014
First decision: October 16, 2014
Revised: November 14, 2014
Accepted: November 27, 2014
Article in press: December 1, 2014
Published online: March 9, 2015
Core Tip
Core tip: Carbapenemase-producing bacteria were a rare curiosity 15 years ago, as these bacteria were primarily detected in hospital settings. However, now carbapenemase-producing bacteria are observed in farms, companion or wild animals and even in distant glaciers, becoming an epidemic. The relevance this subject has acquired can be easily demonstrated through a search in any medical database; more than 1500 articles have been published depicting the exponential isolation of these bacteria since 1990, with an alarming acceleration in the last seven years.