Infections are reminder that antibiotics need protection, cultivation
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The more antibiotics are used, the less effective they become. A bacterium called methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, known as MRSA, over time has built up resistance to front-line antibiotics. Once thought of as a problem primarily in hospitals, staph infections now pop up in schools, prisons, gyms and tattoo parlors.
While curable, especially if caught early, MRSA can be deadly. In fact, it kills 19,000 Americans each year, taking a higher toll than AIDS.
The rising incidence of such staph infections underlines the importance of protecting the effectiveness of antibiotics, and it demonstrates that antibiotics are losing their usefulness faster than drug companies are developing new ones.
The indiscriminate feeding of antibiotics to animals as a preventive measure has contributed to growing resistance in bacteria. So has the overprescription of antibiotics to people, along with people who fail to take their medicines as directed.
Earlier this year, the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised doctors to stop using a class of antibiotics called fluoroquinolones to treat gonorrhea because so many strains of the disease had become resistant. Until 2005, fluoroquinolones were fed to chickens to prevent respiratory problems. Another class of antibiotics, cephalosporins, could be in danger, because the Food and Drug Administration is considering approving the antibiotic cefquinome for use in cattle. An FDA advisory panel has recommended against approval. The FDA should listen to its panel.
Meanwhile, drug companies have been slow to develop antibiotics. New ones are being approved at about half the rate they were 20 years ago. Manufacturers tend to focus on more-lucrative medicines that people will take repeatedly over a long time, rather than on antibiotics and other drugs that people take less frequently.
The Infectious Diseases Society of America wants Congress to enact incentives for the drug industry to boost research and development on antibiotics and wants additional money for the CDC, the FDA and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to help smooth the path to market for new antibiotics. This proposal deserves consideration.
As antibiotics lose their effectiveness, costlier drugs and the extended hospital stays made necessary by extra rounds of treatment will raise health-care costs. Treating a patient who has MRSA can cost upward of $40,000.
And MRSA is not the only resistant bacterium that poses a threat. Current antibiotics must be protected and new ones must be developed if society is to keep these threats in check.The Columbus Dispatch
