WHO: Antibiotic overuse so prevalent scraped knee could be deadly

Charlotte Harbor, Fla., Publix Pharmacy Technician Sherrie Cocco rings up a customer on Aug. 6,2007, behind a display of oral antibiotics.

/ AP Photo/Charlotte Sun

(CBS News) Overuse of antibiotics has become so prevalent that if the trend continues, a normal infection can become deadly, according to statements made by World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan.

"Things as common as strep throat or a child's scratched knee could once again kill," she warned.

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Speaking at a conference called "Combating antimicrobial resistance: Time for action" in Copenhagen on Wednesday, Chan warned that "drug-resistant pathogens are notorious globe-trotters," saying they easily hop on board with air travelers, are shipped along in globally traded food and have been accelerated through hospital-acquired infections, thanks to the growth of medical tourism.

"We are losing our first-line antimicrobials. Replacement treatments are more costly, more toxic, need much longer durations of treatment, and may require treatment in intensive care units," she said.

Chan explained that patients who have been infected by some drug-resistant pathogens now have an increased mortality rate of about 50 percent. For example, there are now about 650,000 cases of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis strains. Because treatment requires two years of expensive and toxic medication, about 325,000 of those affected will die. The CDC reported in 2008 alone, 8.2 percent of tuberculosis cases in the U.S. were drug-resistant. Though the majority of the cases were from people born overseas, over 18 percent were found in U.S. born patients.

Drug-resistant pathogens might also be found in food. CBS News reported that a study showed that 47 percent of meat sampled from five U.S. cities in 2011 had drug-resistant staph bacteria, or MRSA.

To make matters worse, the most deadly pathogens - which are resistant to the strongest antimicrobials - are being found in more and more hospitals. HealthPop reported that a  treatment-resistant form of C. diff bacteria that causes gastroenteritis has contributed to a five-fold increase in deaths from the disease between1999 and 2007. More than 14,500 people a year now die from this strain of the disease, up from 2,700 in 1999.

With antibiotics becoming less effective, more complex procedures like organ transplants and caring for preterm infants could become too risky and difficult to do.

The problem is many drug companies see no point in investing to develop better antimicrobial drugs because they will just be rendered ineffective in a few years because of overuse. "It's simply not profitable for them,"  Dr. William Schaffner, chairman of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, told ABC News. He compared the problem to Ford creating a car that people would drive only if all other cars were not working.

"If you create a new drug to reduce cholesterol, people will be taking that drug every day for the rest of their lives. But you only take antibiotics for a week or maybe 10 days," he explained.

The Director-General said that doctors need to prescribe antibiotics appropriately and only when necessary. She said there also needs to be an overhaul in how much antibiotics are used in food production, and more needs to be done to stop substandard and counterfeit medications.

In January, the FDA announced it's restricting the amounts of cephalosporin antibiotics used in cattle and livestock, citing concerns that people would be resistant to the drug if they develop a life-threatening disease, like pneumonia or meningitis.

"If current trends continue unabated, the future is easy to predict. Some experts say we are moving back to the pre-antibiotic era. No. This will be a post-antibiotic era," Chan said. "In terms of new replacement antibiotics, the pipeline is virtually dry...The cupboard is nearly bare."

[hardsnow]

Interesting. My daughter was hospitalized last week for severe sepsis (i.e. tachycardia, procalcitonin = 38 ng/mL, etc). Thankfully she responded to vancomycin and is now recovering; had she contracted drug resistant infection the ER docs might have had been further challenged. My grandfather was an MD and preached moderation regarding ABX in the sixties; perhaps he was correct in doing so...

[FormerUSMCSergeant]

by myoleman March 17, 2012 8:07 PM EDT
The promise is absolutely true; you can bet your life on it.
---
You bet YOUR life on it.

I know better.

[FormerUSMCSergeant]

by myoleman March 16, 2012 8:22 PM EDT
But we have eternal life waiting for us if we trust Lord Jesus with our lives.
--
Correction:

You have the PROMISE - and that's about it.

No "satisfied customer" has ever validated the promise as fact.

[myoleman]

Lord Jesus Christ was the "first-fruits", the first one to resurrect from the dead and enjoy the eternal life promised to all believers in His Holy Name. The promise is absolutely true; you can bet your life on it.

[FormerUSMCSergeant]

The main reason being that idiots go to their doctor just for having a cold and they think they're not getting their money's worth unless they leave with a scrip. Their doc obliges and gives them a scrip for an antiobotic.

Antiobiotics do nothing for a viral infection.

Stupid.

[coopy67]

I'm an ER doc. Some people with uncomplicated upper respiratory tract infections will always complain if you don't write them an Rx for antibiotics. They are usually the ones who think they know more than I do because they spent a half-hour on WebMD before they came in. Now the trend is "consumer-driven healthcare", where scores on exit surveys are the most weighty factor used to evaluate doctors. Because we are now mostly employed, we worry that pissed-off patients who complain that their "needs were not met" will get us fired. One thing healthcare should not be is consumer-driven, there's just too many loud-mouthed morons out there.

[FormerUSMCSergeant]

Thanks for the validation...and you have my sympathies.

[singerdn]

People don't realize how TRUE this is. People always want the "big guns" when it comes to getting treated...swift, powerful. Years ago a loved one was hospitalized with sepsis and all the "big guns" were not enough to save him. That's when a doctor told me that the medical profession (drugs) were always in a battle with new strains of bacteria. When the drugs would get ahead some new strain would appear that would be resistant. Later the drugs might get ahead, but only for a short time. We need to save our super antibiotics so they will remain SUPER!

[jlynnknits]

I was hospitalized for sepsis right before Christmas. They tried a lot of different antibiotics and nothing worked. Finally, after several days of trial and error, they found a new antibiotic that worked. It was $600 a day and they were hesitant to use it because it was pretty harsh and very expensive. I'm glad they had that one in their arsenal or I wouldn't be here, but it is scary that their strongest "normal" antibiotics had absolutely no effect.

[Jaylah54]

It's actually getting difficult to buy even a bottle of dish soap that isn't "antibacterial." Like you can't get your dishes clean with just soap and hot water.

I go to the grocery store now and see these little plastic containers next to the cart racks with "antibacterial wipes" in them to use on the handles of the carts.

I think our grandmothers had it right when they said everybody needed to eat at least a pound of dirt in their life. You have to be exposed to a certain amount of bacteria to build up any resistance to the illnesses they cause. If you do your best to live in a sterile world, even a slight exposure makes you seriously ill.

[rj2000k]

You don't know the difference between antibiotics and antibacterial.

Many of the products you mentioned probably only contain alcohol, a very potent antibacterial.

[Jaylah54]

I know the difference (as was obvious by my post.)

You obviously don't know the relationship.

[webinventaekhlas]

I had typhoid once. Then I had taken 60 Antibiotic in two months by my prescribe doctor. But the doctor was not very experience, so I suffer a lot at that time, Once I thought I might Die.

[MIO42]

We All forget
We are just another Species on a planet where BACTERIA rule the roost
Always have and always will
Good bacteria and Bad bacteria
Just like the people they infect

[myoleman]

It looked like fun for a while, unfortunately the infections are catching up to the treatments, and starting to overcome them, too. In the end we'll be worse off than a century ago, since these super-resistant diseases now have more and faster ways to travel around the planet. Every which way you turn it, we end up dead. One out of one dies. But we have eternal life waiting for us if we trust Lord Jesus with our lives. A life that no infection can develop resistance to. Not even sin.

[coopy67]

Thanks for the fear-mongering CBS, parents already won't let their kids go play without packaging them in bubble-wrap. Properly cleaned and dressed wounds are rarely infected, and in the average person quite treated properly, quite unlikely to become infected with a resistant bug. And thanks for the knee-jerk over-reaction whitecranegrace. You don't know as much as you think you do. Schedule 2 drugs haven't needed triplicate prescriptions for over 5 years.