- BOSTON (Reuters) - The risk
of developing an antibiotic-resistant infection rose by about a third from
1995 to 1998, the latest warning that antibiotics are losing their effectiveness
due to overuse, researchers reported in Thursday's New England Journal
of Medicine.
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- Extensive use in both people and animals is breeding
new generations of bugs that withstand antibiotics, drugs that revolutionized
medicine when they were introduced in the middle of the 20th century. The
declining effectiveness of antibiotics is a serious concern to the medical
community.
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- The new study focused on Streptococcus pneumoniae, the
most commonly identified cause of meningitis, pneumonia and middle ear
infections in the United States. The findings illustrated that the risk
of developing an antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection rose substantially
between 1995 and 1998.
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- Among those who developed a Streptococcus pneumoniae
infection, 14 percent in 1998 had one resistant to at least three different
types of antibiotics, compared to 9 percent in 1995.
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- ``Multidrug-resistant pneumococci are common and are
increasing,'' said the research team, led by Dr. Cynthia Whitney of the
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
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- Millions Of Pounds Of Antibiotics Consumed Annually
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- About 160 million antibiotic prescriptions are written
in the United States each year for some 25 million pounds (11.3 million
kg) of antibiotics. About half of those prescriptions are unnecessary,
according to an editorial in the Journal.
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- Animals are fed a similar amount of antibiotics.
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- The new study's findings were based on tests of 3,475
samples from 1998 from all over the country. Twenty-four percent of the
bacteria in the samples were resistant to penicillin, and the rate ranged
up to 35 percent in Tennessee and down to 15 percent in New York and California.
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- Once the bacteria had adapted to fight off penicillin,
the researchers found, they were likely to be able to withstand the onslaught
of other types of antibiotics as well.
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- One answer, researchers said, is to take greater care
in the use of the drugs, which are so common they are often included in
the food of livestock.
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- Another is to immunize people against pneumococcal infections
through vaccination. The vaccine, already used for adults, recently has
become available to young children in the United States.
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- In their editorial, Drs. Richard Wenzel and Michael Edmond
of Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond said routinely immunizing
infants in the United States would prevent 53,000 cases of pneumonia, 12,000
cases of meningitis and 110 deaths each year.
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- The elderly and those with weak immune systems also face
a high risk of death or illness from pneumococcal infections.
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- ``We need to reassess policies on antibiotic use while
changing our approach to include vaccinations against pneumococcal infections
of all children over the age of 4, all adults over age 65, and all people
with HIV infection,'' Wenzel and Edmond said.
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