September 02, 2011
With the 1st Global Forum on Bacterial Infections about a month away, we’ll be transitioning to exclusive coverage of antimicrobial resistance. This blog will also be a source for meeting news and new research findings presented at the conference.
I’m kicking things off with a few recent mentions of CDDEP’s flagship projects on antibiotic resistance Extending the Cure (ETC) and the Global Antibiotic Resistance Partnership (GARP).
First, Superbug covers an important MMWR report from the CDC on antibiotic prescribing for children. The two ETC publications mentioned document the increase in antibiotic consumption during flu season. While some of these prescriptions are necessary and appropriate to treat secondary bacterial infections, including bacterial pneumonias, up to 1,000,000 antibiotic prescriptions during flu season offer no benefit at all. You can read more about this issue, and why flu shots have the potential to address it, at the Health Care Blog.
Second, Bloomberg has a very interesting piece on the booming pharmaceutical industry in India. The story outlines the plight of pharmaceutical sales reps working to catch the ears of doctors in what s quickly becoming a massively overcrowded field. The pharmaceutical sales market in India, currently at about $12 billion, encompasses some 92,000 registered pharmaceuticals. The GARP report mentioned in the article surveys use of antibiotics in India, as well as trends in antibiotic resistance, and can be found in full here.
Finally, a few other interesting bits of antibiotic news that have come out recently:
Friend of Extending the Cure Dr. Martin Blaser has a new article in Nature on the harmful effects of antibiotics beyond simply the evolution of antibiotic resistance. Dr. Blaser s assertion is that there is a troubling correlation between increasing antibiotic use and a rise in conditions such as obesity, inflammatory bowel disease, and type 1 diabetes, among others. Could repeated antibiotic regimens which kill off the good bacteria as well as the bad have such far-reaching unintended consequences? Dr. Blaser’s intriguing article is available through Nature (subscription required).
A team out of McMaster University has uncovered evidence of antibiotic resistance dating as far back as 30,000 years ago. Antibiotic resistance is typically cast in modern terms as a problem which emerged with the advent of medical antibiotics in the 1940s. But the evolution of bacterial resistance to antibiotics is a natural process, and can occur with exposure to antibiotics found in the environment as well. As Not Exactly Rocket Science points out, it’s the tremendous selection pressure on bacteria today – stemming from high levels of antibiotic consumption – which has the medical community concerned about the hastened development of resistance to important antibiotic treatments.
A study in the September issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology finds high rates of multi-drug resistant (MDR) bacteria in a U.S. military hospital in Afghanistan. MDR bacteria were recovered from 130 of 1836 patients, with E. coli, S. aureus, Acinetobacter, and Klebsiella the most frequently isolated pathogens. The study authors found particularly high rates of MDR bacteria present on admission of Afghan patients, suggesting high levels of MDR in the community. What does the study mean for military hospital settings, where conditions are especially conducive to spreading drug-resistant infections? Strict adherence to infection control practices is essential.
Stay tuned over the next month for more news and info about antibiotic resistance and the 1st Global Forum on Bacterial Infections. If you want to learn more about the meeting, visit http://www.globalbacteria.org, or email us at [email protected].
Image credit: iStock photo
