(New York Times) – Researchers are trying to understand why resistant pathogens are so prevalent in the war-torn nations of the Middle East.

Nations of the Middle East, like Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan, now suffer from particularly high rates of multidrug-resistant pathogens, and some of the world’s most fearsome superbugs have incubated in the region — Klebsiella pneumoniae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, E. coli, MRSA and perhaps most notably A. baumannii, a strain of Acinetobacter that traveled home with U.S. soldiers, where it became nicknamed “Iraqibacter.”

Humans are host to more than a thousand species of bacteria, including many of the superbugs deemed critical threats by the World Health Organization. But they rarely become pathogenic in healthy people. War changes that. (Read More)