Dr Horton told TOI that "it was an error of judgement" on their part to allow the article get published with the name NDM-1 as "we didn't think of its implications for which I sincerely apologise."
According to Dr Horton, naming the bug after New Delhi "unnecessarily stigmatised a single country and city".
Dr Horton, however, strongly felt that the science "was strong, sound and correct" but in the mistake of naming the bug, "it distracted people from the important science".
The journal, he said on Tuesday, has now learnt to be more careful with new inventions, discoveries or conditions named after a particular country or city. "I would welcome if researchers changed the name of the superbug but it is in the hands of those who named it in the first place," Dr Horton who is in India said.
Reacting to Dr Horton's comments, director-general of the Indian Council of medical Research Dr V M Katoch said, "It was unfair to name a superbug -- organisms that grow in nature in every country -- after India without any evidence that it originated here."
In August 2010, `Lancet' had published a multi-centre study, warning how a new superbug had emerged from India and had spread across the world which made bacteria highly resistant to almost all antibiotics, including the most powerful class called carbapenems.
India's scientific fraternity, including the Union health ministry, had strongly lodged a complaint against naming it after New Delhi saying it was a ploy to put a stop to and "defame India's growing medical tourism industry". The ministry went on an overdrive to convince people that Indian hospitals were safe for foreign patients and described the study "malicious propaganda".
The `Lancet' study had said NDM-1 was common in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh in particular and had spread to over 15 countries including United Kingdom, US, Canada, Australia, Netherlands and Japan.
Most experts blamed the emergence of this gene on the widespread misuse of antibiotics stating that Indian doctors had not yet taken the issue of antibiotic resistance seriously and that India needed both an improved policy to control the use of antibiotics and a central registry of antibiotic-resistant infections.
Dr Samlee Plianbangchang, WHO's regional director for south-east Asia, had said that the drug resistance was caused "largely due to the incorrect use of medicines, including use for too short a time, too low a dose, inadequate potency or for a wrong disease."
Abdul Ghafur, one of the authors of the superbug story from Chennai, recently said the alliance between the enzyme and New Delhi was only hypothetical and not proven. He said he strongly believed that the name of NDM-1 must be changed to remove the words "New Delhi".
Read more: Lancet says sorry for 'Delhi bug' - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Lancet-says-sorry-for-Delhi-bug-/articleshow/7261135.cms#ixzz1AtGHzJ9e
