The U.S. Centers for Disease Control says that 2 million Americans have been sickened by some strain of drug-resistant bacteria and around 23,000 died because their infections could not be treated.
A deputy director for the CDC’s Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion says that the overuse of antibiotics contributes heavily to the problem.
“Very recently we looked at how good antibiotic prescriptions are in this country, and about half are unnecessary or the wrong antibiotic,” Dr. Michael Bell told CNBC. “That’s a lot of room for improvement.”
Federal officials are attempting to spur drug companies into creating new antibiotics. The Generating Antibiotic Incentives Now act, or GAIN, gives companies an additional five years of market-based exclusivity for drugs if they are produced for a “qualified infectious disease.”
“If you move to the post-antibiotic era, that means all of the advances of modern medicine could be reversed,” Cubist Pharmaceuticals’ Dr. Obi Umeh told CNBC. “Patients who had that infection in which there was no treatment option, they were in the post-antibiotic era.”
A USA Today study shows that the deadly MRSA bacteria are spreading far beyond hospitals.
The bacteria were commonly found in hospitals other health care facilities but did not impact the general population. Now, reports of the bacteria are being found in schools, workout clubs and even NFL locker rooms.
Researchers say MRSA’s ability to quickly develop immunity to drugs is hampering their ability to stop its spread. Despite a 30% decline in MRSA infections in health care facilities, there is little to no decline in community-based strains of the bacteria. Infections among children have jumped 10% a year because it can spread from two students simply bumping into each other in the hallway.
“We don’t really understand the origin of these [community based] strains,” Costi Sifri, an infectious-disease physician at the University of Virginia Health System., told the USA Today. “And we don’t really know how to contain them.”
Hospitals and doctors in most states are not required to report MRSA infections so groups like the CDC have had trouble monitoring outbreaks of the disease.
Researchers say the most effective way to stop MRSA is to develop a vaccine for staph infections. However, they say that a viable vaccine for the mass market is still years into the future.
The associate director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told PBS that the age of antibiotics has come to an end.
Dr. Arjun Srinivasan told PBS’s series Frontline that humans and livestock have been so overmedicated that bacteria have simply become resistant to the antibiotics currently on the market.
‘For a long time, there have been newspaper stories and covers of magazines that talked about “The end of antibiotics, question mark?”‘ Dr.Srinivasan said. ‘Well, now I would say you can change the title to “The end of antibiotics, period.”’
Dr. Srinivasan said that hospitals are now having patients admitted with infections that could be easily treated with antibiotics five years ago who have no effective treatment available. He also mentioned the increase in infections among places that in the past were not common places. For example, MRSA recently broke out in the locker room of the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Until about a decade ago, MRSA was mainly seen in hospitals.
The blame for the increase in antibiotic resistant bugs was attributed partially to overuse and abuse of antibiotics and drug manufacturers not creating new antibiotics because they are not a profitable line of research.
The Centers for Disease Control has conducted tests on the nine Alabama patients suffering from mysterious illnesses and has found that no single germ seems to be the cause. Continue reading →
A new report by the Centers for Disease Control shows 13 times as many Americans contracted a sexually transmitted infection in 2008 than obtained a college bachelor’s degree.
The rate of new infections in 2008 was 19.7 million, bringing the nation’s total to 110,197,000 total infections. By contract, the number of Americans who obtained a bachelor’s degree that year was 1,524,092. In the 15-to-24 age range, the ratio of infections to degrees was 6 to 1. Continue reading →
The Centers for Disease Control have confirmed the first cases of a completely drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis in South Africa. The CDC report is calling the infection “virtually untreatable.”
Tuberculosis is the second most fatal infectious disease worldwide after HIV. Continue reading →
A massive flu outbreak has hit the United States overwhelming hospitals to the point some have had to set up tents to handle the number of patients.
Lehigh Valley Cedar Crest Hospital has tents set up outside the emergency room because of the “increased number of people with flu-like symptoms” according to staff members. Continue reading →
The death toll from West Nile virus broke into the triple digits last week as another 30% increase in cases is being reported by health officials.
On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported at least 2,636 cases of the virus with a confirmed 118 fatalities. The totals are the highest recorded by the second week of September since 2003 when public health officials launched an aggressive random testing campaign. Continue reading →
The US death toll from West Nile virus has jumped almost one third in a one-week period. The Centers for Disease Control reports that 87 people have now been confirmed to have died from the disease.
The number of cases confirmed by the CDC has also jumped in the past week from 1,590 to 1,993. It is now officially the largest outbreak of West Nile virus in the United States since 1999. Continue reading →
The director of Vector-Borne Infectious Diseases for the CDC is warning that the United States could see the worst outbreak of West Nile Virus in history.
The virus is responsible for 41 deaths in the US and over 1,100 people infected. The CDC states that increase is alarming considering that only 25 cases had been reported last month. The only states that do not have cases reported are Alaska, Hawaii and Vermont. Continue reading →