Microbes' increased resistance to antibiotics concerns researchers

[Guest guest]

And a final one about microbial resistance, one of my pet peeves :-))

Peace

Torsten

September 28, 2002 Saturday

HEADLINE: Microbes' increased resistance to antibiotics concerns

researchers

BYLINE: PASCAL BAROLLIER

DATELINE: SAN DIEGO, California, Sept 28

BODY:

International researchers on Saturday sounded the alarm over the

increasing

resistance of bacteria to powerful antibiotics, reducing the ability

of

doctors

to combat common diseases.

Some warned a major international medical conference here that

anti-biotics

are being seriously over-prescribed by doctors and that action must

be

taken to

maintain their effectiveness.

Experts highlighted the case of Ciprofloxacin, or Cipro, a powerful

antibiotic used during suspected anthrax contaminations in Post-

September

11

terrorist mail attacks, which is showing signs of weakening against

the

disease.

University of California researchers who conducted a study on

13,000

pneumonia sufferers around the United States warned the

effectiveness of

Cipro

and other antibiotics known as fluoroquinolones was being " seriously

eroded "

through saturation use.

" Overuse of fluoroquinolones for infections that can be treated

with

narrow-spectrum antibiotics has seriously eroded their

effectiveness, " said

ph Guglielmo, a University of California-San Francisco Medical

Center

clinical pharmacology professor who headed the study.

The study, he said, showed that fluoroquinolone antibiotics were

prescribed

by doctors for more than 30 percent of patients after they left

hospitals,

in

cases where less focused drugs would have been adequate.

A disturbing consequence, said researchers, was that

fluoroquinolones, effective against the bacteria E. coli in 90

percent of

cases until 1997, where now effective in only 79 percent of cases.

" Fluoroquinolones have been particularly useful in treating common

bladder

infections and infections associated with cystic fibrosis, "

Guglielmo told

the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and

Chemotherapy. " But we've

seen dramatic increases in bacterial resistance to these agents over

thepast few years. "

Gerald Aubert of the University Hospital in Saint-Etienne, France,

toldthe conference " fluoroquinolones are extremely valuable

antibiotics for certain types of infection and it is therefore vital

to ensure that they remain effective against their specific target

organisms. "

Aubert sugested one means of regaining ground on microbes that had

developed

resistance would be to limit use of fluoroquinolones while other

medications were being administered.

That method, tested in a hospital study on a microbe highly

resistant to antibiotics, reduced the resistance level to

fluoroquinolones from 72percent to 52.4 percent.

Wong, of the US Naval Research Station in San Diego, said

studies had shown bacteria in 10 bottle-nose dolphin -- eight

Atlantic and twoPacific

-- had developed a resistance to fluoroquinolones.

" The origins of these bacteria are yet to be determined, " she

said. " As

such, it may be important to assess how human waste spills and food

animal waste introduce antimicrobial resistance to the ocean. "

Of 668 bacteria tested, 17, or 2,5 percent, were resistant to

ciprofloxacin, said Wong.

At the conference, which runs through Monday, presentations showed

thatin the United States 70 percent of bacterial infections

contracted in hospital are resistant to at least one of the

medications being used to treat them.

In addition, two million patients are infected in hospital each

year, and

90,000 of them die of complications from these infections, according

to the US Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.