Each year, more than two million people in the United States are affected by infections with antibiotic-resistant bacteria and at least 23,000 people die from them. The new detailed report from the US Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warns of the health threat of antibiotic resistant drugs in the United States. Misuse and overconsumption of antibiotics has created a worrying medical situation, all the more so as there are few new molecules in development to manufacture new effective antibiotics.
About 50% of antibiotics prescribed to patients are unnecessary or not ordered appropriately.
The report establishes the threats of antibiotic resistance in the United States in 2013 according to several risk factors: the impact on health, the economic impact, the 10-year projection of this phenomenon, the ease of spread, the availability effective antibiotics; and barriers to prevention.
Urgent threats
Threats were assessed as urgent for Carbapenem Resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), gonorrhea, and Clostridium difficile, a serious diarrheal infection typically associated with antibiotic use. Clostridium difficile is responsible for approximately 250,000 hospitalizations and at least 14,000 deaths each year in the United States. And according to this report, there are 800,000 cases of gonorrhea annually in the United States, a growing proportion of which is resistant to all available antibiotics.
“Antibiotic resistance is on the rise for many different pathogens that pose health threatsSaid CDC Director Tom Frieden. “If we don’t act now, our medicine cabinet will be empty and we won’t have the antibiotics we need to save lives.“.
Antibiotic resistance: a huge financial cost
Studies have already estimated that in the United States, antibiotic resistance costs 20 billion dollars in health costs, and generates a loss of productivity of 35 billion dollars.
Misuse and overuse of antibiotics are the most important factors leading to antibiotic resistance. “Whenever antibiotics are used in any setting, bacteria evolve to develop resistance. This process can occur at an alarming rate Said Steve Solomon, director of CDC. “These drugs are a precious and limited resource, the more antibiotics we use today, the less likely we are to have effective antibiotics tomorrow.“.
