The CDC Foundation is an independent, nonprofit enterprise that forges
partnerships between between the Centers for Disease Control and others to
fight threats to health and safety. The Foundation's newsletter, Frontline,
for Spring 2001 has the following lead article:
COMBATTING DRUG FAILURE
Antimicrobial Resistance: An Evolving Threat to Healthcare
Antibiotics -- drugs that fight infections caused by bacteria -- are the
heavy artillery in the health care arsenal. their widespread availability
beginning in the 1940s revolutionized medical care and dramatically reduced
illness and death from infectious diseases. However, the microorganisms that
antibiotics control have, over the past 60 years, developed resistance to
these drugs. Today, virtually all important bacterial infections in the
United States and throughout the world are becoming resistant -- and
resistance is rapidly emerging in viral, parasitic and fungal infections as
well. For this reason, antimicrobial resistance (AR) is among CDC's top
concerns and is one of the four strategic program priorities for the CDC
Foundation.
"We are facing a situation in which existing drugs are losing their
usefulness and very few new ones are becoming available to take their place,"
says David Bell, MD, assistant to the director for antimicrobial resistance
in CDC's National Center for Infectious Diseases. "We haven't reached the
point yet in the U.S. where lots of people are dying of untreatable
infections," Bell says. However, physicians are commonly forced to use
second, third or even fourth choice drugs when the preferred ones fail.
These drugs are usually much more expensive and may also be less effective or
have toxic side effects. In developing countries, more expensive drugs to
treat resistant infections are often not available....
"Forty percent of all infections of Staphylococcus aureus are now resistant
to standard treatment," says Julie Gerberding, MD, MPH, director of the
Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion....
Up to 30 percent of pneumococci, a leading cause of the bacterial pneumonia
cases, no longer respond to the preferred antibiotic, but in the 1970s,
virtually 100 percent of these bacteria were responsive...
"Drug resistance affects virtually all important human infections," says
Bell, "and unlike in the past, there are very few new drugs coming down the
pipeline to replace the ones that are no longer useful because of
resistance," He says that most 'new' drugs are relatives of existing drugs --
not any real new breakthrough.
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Should there be an effort to have CS fill this breach?
Allen
