Deaths from infections from bacteria with high antibiotic resistance now stands at about 700,000 per year.
Advertisement
The common medical practice of giving patients antibiotics to ward off infections during surgery or chemotherapy is contributing to a rise in “superbugs” – bacteria that resist most treatments – and could lead to thousands more deaths if it’s not kept in check as microbes’ resistance increases, according to a study report published online Thursday in the journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases. The team predicted the percentage of prophylactic antibiotic-resistant pathogens that were responsible for infections subsequent to the scheduled procedures.
Animals that are commonly used as meat (cow, pig, and chicken) sources are reported to be injected with antibiotics, which may cause antibiotic resistant bacteria to thrive in them.
If the efficacy of antibiotics drops 30 percent-a rate that the authors see as realistic given the current overuse of antibiotics-then infections from surgeries and chemotherapies could result in 120,000 more infections and 6,300 more infection-related deaths each year in the United States. However, the results of a recent study has estimated how many more infections will occur if antibiotics become less effective.
To estimate the hazard posed to modern medicine by antibiotic resistance, the researchers reviewed hundreds of clinical trials between 1968 and 2011 that examined the effectiveness of antibiotics in preventing infection after chemotherapy or 10 common surgical procedures. It also requires California officials to start a monitoring program to gather information on medically important antibiotic drug sales and usage, data on antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and livestock management data that does not duplicate NARMS, the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System.
To address the problem, Laxminarayan said, physicians need further training on appropriate use of antibiotics and post-surgical infection prevention, while patients must make sure their vaccinations are up to date.
Antibiotic resistance is a growing public health issue and has gotten attention from Congress. “It lets you think about how to not use them [antibiotics], rather than just using them judiciously“. They calculated the additional number of infections and infection-related deaths under different scenarios of reduction in the efficacy of antibiotic prophylaxis. “But how well these turn out depends on how well the antibiotics used to keep infections away during surgery work”.
At that time, Dr. Keiji Fukuda, assistant director-general for health security at the WHO, wrote in a statement, “Without urgent, coordinated action by many stakeholders, the world is headed for a post-antibiotic era, in which common infections and minor injuries which have been treatable for decades can once again kill”.
Advertisement
According to researcher Ramanan Laxminarayan, this is the first study to estimate the impact of antibiotic resistance on broader medical care in the United States. Experts are underlining the need for research to create stronger drugs, or improve strategies of controlling or preventing antibiotic resistance.
