CDC Calls Antibiotic Resistance "Potentially Catastrophic"

The ability of microbes to resist antibiotics—fed by overuse of these drugs in both people and food animals—can “spread between continents with ease” and lead to possible pandemics, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

In a recently released report, Antibiotic Resistance Threats in the United States, 2013, the CDC states that at least 2 million Americans are sickened each year by bacteria that are resistant to one or more types of antibiotics, leading to at least 23,000 deaths.

People whose immune systems have been compromised, including those going through medical procedures such as chemotherapy, run the greatest risk, as are people who are recovering from complex surgeries or who undergo kidney dialysis.

“Antibiotic-resistant infections add considerable and avoidable costs to the already overburdened US healthcare system,” says the report. “In most cases, antibiotic-resistant infections require prolonged and/or costlier treatments, extend hospital stays…and result in greater disability and death compared with [easily treatable] infections.”

“We see this as a landmark report,” Steven L. Solomon, MD, director of the CDC’s Office of Antimicrobial Resistance, told the website Medscape. Noting that the agency had previously released material about various aspects of the problem, Solomon said, “This is the first time that we have put all of that material together to show that antimicrobial resistance is a huge and very frightening problem for the United States.”

The report assigns 18 of the most problematic microbes to different threat categories: urgent, serious and concerning. The three urgent threats are the family of bacteria that includes E. coli, which causes mostly digestive tract infections; drug-resistant strains of the bacteria that causes gonorrhea; and Clostridium difficile, a microbe that causes severe diarrhea. While C. difficile, which leads to 14,000 deaths annually, isn’t significantly resistant itself, generalized antibiotic resistance has allowed it to spread rapidly.

In addition to over-prescription of antibiotics among people these drugs are often used in farm animals to kill off bacteria that might slow growth, allowing animals to reach marketable weight more quickly. However, “this use contributes to the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in food-producing animals,” states the CDC report. “People who consume these foods can develop antibiotic-resistant infections.”

In response to the threat, the CDC recommends eliminating unnecessary prescriptions among both people and animals. Other agency recommendations including careful tracking of antibiotic-resistant infections and developing new diagnostic tests and drugs.