(20-04-13) Antibiotic resistance poses 'catastrophic threat' to mankind over next 20 years: Breaking report

by J. D. Heyes

(NaturalNews) The growing resistance to the world's supply of antibiotics is
becoming a "catastrophic threat" that will manifest itself over the next 20
years, according to a new report from the British government.

Dame Sally Davies, Britain's Chief Medical Officer, called for global action
in her first annual report to combat spreading antimicrobial resistance, which
she said could cause tens of millions of patients to die following even minor
surgery within two decades.

Davies said the problem is growing so large and serious that the British
government should rank it alongside terrorism and climate change as one of the
country's biggest threats.

Setting medical treatment back 200 years

For years antibiotics have grown increasingly ineffective against key
bacteriological strains, a phenomenon that is worsening due to a "discover
void" of new, stronger antibiotics, she said. In her report, Davies called for
a host of actions to address the threat, which may eventually include tighter
restrictions on how doctors prescribe antibiotics for their patients, The
Independent reported.

"This is a growing problem, and if we don't get it right, we will find
ourselves in a health system not dissimilar from the early 19th century," she
said.

Davies herself acknowledged that the problem has been a long time in the
making, but she said she decided to give it new focus because of the dire
implications of inaction.

"I knew about antimicrobial resistance as a doctor, but I hadn't realized how
bad it was or how fast it is growing," said Davies.

In her report she says:

There is a need for politicians in the UK to prioritise antimicrobial
resistance as a major area of concern, including on the national risk register
and pushing for action internationally as well as in local healthcare services.

Antimicrobial resistance is a ticking time-bomb not only for the UK but also
for the world. We need to work with everyone to ensure the apocalyptic scenario
of widespread antimicrobial resistance does not become a reality. This threat
is arguably as important as climate change.

Thousands already dying each year

Keith Ridge, the British chief pharmaceutical officer, said though the control
mechanism for doling out prescriptions of antibiotics has been strengthened in
hospitals, there needs to be tighter, more thoughtful control of antibiotic
prescriptions by general practitioners.

In Britain, hospital infections caused by MRSA and C. diff have been reduced
by some 80 percent over the past 10 years, but those have been replaced by
other tough-to-kill bacteria, such as E. coli and klebsiella, the latter two
now the most frequent causes of hospital-borne infections, The Independent
reported.

In the U.S., carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae, or CRE, has become more
common in the past decade, according to the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention. Infectious disease specialist Dr. Brad Spellberg, of the Los
Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center,
compared the worsening problem to the fate of the Titanic.

"We're not talking about an iceberg that's down the line. The ship has hit the
iceberg. We're taking on water. We already have people dying. Not only of CRE,
but of untreatable CRE," he told National Public Radio.

In the U.K., about 5,000 people a year die from bloodstream infections - half
of them from drug-resistant organisms. In the U.S., the CDC estimates that
about 20,000 die from them.

As antibiotic use has increased, so has resistance

As antibiotic use has increased over the past several years, so has
resistance, the experts say. That's because the "pipeline" of new antibiotic
drugs is drying up; there has not been the development of a new class of
antibiotics since 1987, and no new classes are currently in the global
pipeline, The Independent reported. A small number of individual drugs are
being developed by a few British companies, the paper said, but that's about
it.

Davies blames part of that development shortage on Big Pharma - there is
little profit in antibiotics because they are expensive to develop but are only
taken in short courses, unlike, say, blood pressure medications that must be
taken for long periods of time.

"We may have to work with the pharmaceutical companies in public-private
partnerships, and we may have to do some development of antibiotics on a public
basis" in order to fill the "development void," she said.

Davies pointed to the Innovative Medicines Initiative, which is a joint
undertaking between the EU and the pharmaceutical industry which fosters a
collective effort towards pharmaceutical innovation, especially when it comes
to new classes of antibiotics.

"We are going to have to up our education, so that the doctors and nurses and
vets who prescribe antibiotics do it knowing the risks and advantages, and
think about that balance, and also spend time with patients explaining why
they're not prescribing them," Davies said.

Sources:

http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com

http://www.greenmedinfo.com

http://www.independent.co.uk

http://www.npr.org

News

---

In evidenza

"L'informazione presente nel sito serve a migliorare, e non a sostituire, il rapporto medico-paziente."

Per coloro che hanno problemi di salute si consiglia di consultare sempre il proprio medico curante.