With the development of vaccines and antibiotics, bacteria infections are not something people worry to much about. But growing numbers of antibiotic-resistance infections have raised concern. The Center for Disease Control conservatively estimated that two million people contract antibiotic-resistant infections and 23,000 die from it. It is also said that many infections that are developed in hospital settings are resistant to some antibiotics. A major concern for these drug-resistant bacteria is the industrial-scale farming procedures. Most of the antibiotics given to the farm animals are unnecessary and could be leading to bacteria developing defenses against it. John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health looked at 440,000 records and found that people who lived near farms were 38% more likely to develop a drug-resistant infection. It, however, can't be concluded that living near farms increases your chance on contracting an antibiotic-resistant infection. Nonetheless, the government should cut down on the amount of antibiotics farmers can feed their livestock. It was also stated that antibiotics are also inappropriately prescribed to patients. Because the excess of antibiotics being used, it increases the numbers of those who don't complete their full dosage. It is known that not completing your antibiotic prescription can cause the bacteria to become immune to it, and come back stronger. Other interventions should be used before antibiotics are prescribed. It is surprising the amount of antibiotic-resistant infections that are picked up at hospitals. How can hospitals and health clinics decrease the spread of infections?
Link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/17/health/cdc-report-finds-23000-deaths-a-year-from-antibiotic-resistant-infections.html?ref=health&_r=0
This is a disturbing report, to say the least! Antibiotic resistance is a serious issue that has clearly been on the rise in recent years, as this article points out. One of the main issues with antibiotic resistance that strikes me is the responsibility of industrial agriculture for so many of the antibiotic-resistant strains that can be pervasive in human populations. The fact that 70% of antibiotics used in the States goes towards industrial agriculture is staggering. In one of my other classes, we touched on the issue of antibiotic use in industrial agriculture and how the use of antibiotics could be phased out if livestock were raised in their natural environments. They wouldn't need antibiotics NEARLY as much if they were in a grassy field, spaced out away from other cows, eating what they have evolved to eat.
ReplyDeleteThis was a very informative--although scary--article. Do we think that better patient-physician relationships and patient education could stop the over-prescription of antibiotics to humans that encourages the development of resistant strains?
It's unfortunate that something we thought we could always count on to help us feel better is starting to backfire on us. It also makes me upset to read that the CDC stripped out cases where a drug-resistant infection was present but may not necessarily been the cause of death, causing the stats on the number of deaths to go down, and if the number of deaths isn't high, people are not as concerned about it. For all we know it could have been a contribution to it. Now that people are starting to get sick from antibiotic resistant bacteria in large numbers, it is now a subject of recognition. Too often we wait for something big and unfortunate to happen before we finally take action. I think a big way to decrease antibiotic resistance is through proper education. Most patients don't carry out their antibiotic treatments to full term; once they feel better, they stop taking them. Also, many patients believe that antibiotics are kind of a "cure all". Colds and flus are viruses, and when people get sick, they want antibiotics to make them feel better, and doctors prescribe them to patients because that is what they want, although they may not necessarily need them. Antibiotics do not treat viruses and they should not be given out so nonchalantly.
ReplyDeleteThis blog post has good timing because we will actually do our next case study on Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus, so we will get to discuss this article in more detail as a class. MRSA is a commonly acquired nosocomial infection, meaning an infection acquired in the hospital setting. A lot of patients acquire a staph infection, post-surgery before leaving the hospital. It can also be a very dangerous infection that is hard to treat because many strain are resistant to various antibiotics.
ReplyDeleteLike Van said- it's too bad that something we use to make us better off is now the cause of something severe. It seems that the problems are not the antibiotics themselves but how we are using them. The mention that "half of the antibiotic use in people is innapropraite" is pretty alarming. Not only are users to blame, but also the doctors. It's important that prescriptions are only being written for people who truely need antibiotics, and that's obviously the doctors descretion.
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