TRENTON -- The first case of antibiotic-resistant E coli bacteria in the country has been identified by New Jersey Medical School researchers in an elderly man who had suffered from a severe urinary tract infection, according to a journal article published on Wednesday.

Physicians at University Hospital in Newark successfully treated the 76-year-old male patient with "other antimicrobial agents" in 2014.

But researchers at the Rutgers University medical school revisited the case this year. They concluded broad-spectrum and "last resort" antibiotics could not arrest this strain of Escherichia coli. A similar strain of the illness was last reported in China, according to the article.

"The good news is that this did not cause a major outbreak of drug-resistant infection," said senior study author Barry N. Kreiswirth, the founding director of the Public Health Research Institute Tuberculosis Center at the medical School.

"The bad news is that since this occurred two years ago, there are clearly other strains out there we haven't detected yet," Kreiswirth said.

The patient developed the infection after he suffered a perforated bladder during a an examination of his kidneys. E. coli is the most common cause of urinary tract infections. Rubber tubes were surgically inserted to help drain the kidneys.

"These strains are probably already in the community and could spread further, essentially building toward a situation where you're going to have difficult if not impossible to treat urinary infections," said lead study author Jose R. Mediavilla, a research teaching specialist.

E coli can cause dehydration, bloody diarrhea and abdominal cramps, and potentially death for some people seniors and young children.

The article is published this week in mBio, an online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology.

Susan K. Livio may be reached at slivio@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @SusanKLivio. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.