'We've reached the end of antibiotics': Top CDC expert declares

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'We've reached the end of antibiotics': Top CDC expert declares that 'miracle drugs' that have saved millions are no match against 'superbugs' because people have overmedicated themselves

A high-ranking official with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has declared in an interview with PBS that the age of antibiotics has come to an end.

'For a long time, there have been newspaper stories and covers of magazines that talked about "The end of antibiotics, question mark?"' said Dr Arjun Srinivasan. 'Well, now I would say you can change the title to "The end of antibiotics, period.”'

The associate director of the CDC sat down with Frontline over the summer for a lengthy interview about the growing problem of antibacterial resistance.

Srinivasan, who is also featured in a Frontline report called 'Hunting the Nightmare Bacteria,' which aired Tuesday, said that both humans and livestock have been overmedicated to such a degree that bacteria are now resistant to antibiotics.

‘We're in the post-antibiotic era,' he said. 'There are patients for whom we have no therapy, and we are literally in a position of having a patient in a bed who has an infection, something that five years ago even we could have treated, but now we can’t.’.

Dr Srinivasan offered an example of this notion, citing the recent case of three Tampa Bay Buccaneers players who made headlines after reportedly contracting potentially deadly MRSA infections, which until recently were largely restricted to hospitals.

About 10 years ago, however, the CDC official began seeing outbreaks of different kinds of MRSA infections in schools and gyms.

‘In hospitals, when you see MRSA infections, you oftentimes see that in patients who have a catheter in their blood, and that creates an opportunity for MRSA to get into their bloodstream,’ he said.
 
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2477273/Weve-reached-end-antibiotics-Top-CDC-expert-declares-miracle-drugs-saved-millions-match-superbugs-people-overmedicated-themselves.html#ixzz2iuxRNNBL

[Psalm 51:17]

Study: Many hospitals use too many antibiotics
http://news.msn.com/us/study-many-hospitals-use-too-many-antibiotics
9/10/14

NEW YORK (AP) — Doctors in many U.S. hospitals are unnecessarily prescribing multiple antibiotics for several days when just one would do the job, a new study released Wednesday suggests.

Health officials have sounded alarms that overuse of antibiotics is helping to breed dangerous bacteria that are increasingly resistant to treatment. Much of the attention has been on doctor offices that wrongly prescribe bacteria-targeting antibiotics for illnesses caused by viruses.

The new study focuses on a different issue — when hospital doctors throw more than one antibiotic at a mystery infection.

Faced with a feverish and deteriorating patient entering the hospital, doctors will at first prescribe a couple of antibiotics. That happens "when we're not exactly sure what we're dealing with," as a bet that at least one of the drugs will help, explained Dr. Barry Fox. He is an expert on antibiotic use at the University of Wisconsin, and was not involved in the study.

Once tests are run and the bug is identified, doctors are supposed to drop any unnecessary second antibiotic, Fox and other experts said.

But the research found that often doesn't happen. In three-quarters of the 500 hospitals studied, patients were still on more than one intravenous antibiotic after two days. The researchers looked at hospital records for 2008 through 2011.

Use of redundant antibiotics can drive up medical costs and increase side effects like diarrhea, the authors said.

The researchers focused on 23 antibiotic combinations that should rarely be used together — even before test results are back, said one of the authors, Dr. Arjun Srinivasan of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The other researchers are from Premier Inc., a North Carolina-based company that operates a purchasing network for hospitals and also does health research.

The study is being published in a medical journal, Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology. The authors call it the first national study to look at the issue.