In the first such case in Japan, a man who was a patient at a university hospital in Tochigi Prefecture was carrying a new type of superbug with the NDM-1 gene, which is resistant to most antibiotics, health officials confirmed Monday.
The NDM-1 gene has been detected in intestinal bacteria such as E. coli and a bug that can invade the lungs called Klebsiella pneumonia, which without the gene are mostly harmless to the human body.
Health authorities are on the alert because the superbug can spread easily from one kind of intestinal bacterium to another even among healthy people, causing pneumonia and other diseases if it spreads to more highly pathogenic bacteria.