The FDA will soon decide whether to approve a potent new antibiotic, called cefiquinone, to treat a pneumonia-like illness in cattle. The American Medical Association and consumer and scientific groups fear that use of this powerful antibiotic in cattle may spur the development of super-resistant germs that will one day infect people.
The discovery of penicillin in 1929 ushered in the great era of antibiotics. Since then, antibiotics have saved millions of lives as the first effective fighters ever in the war against infections. But bacteria have proven a difficult enemy because of their capacity to evolve until they become resistant to the killing power of antibiotics. At times, it seems the rapid growth of antibiotic-resistant bacteria may overcome our ability to develop ever newer and more effective antibiotics.
A recent study in Belgium has proven how often and how quickly bacterial resistance occurs. The 240 volunteers in the study took a placebo or one of two antibiotics of the macrolide class, azithromycin (Zithromax) or clarithromycin (Biaxin).
Compared to the placebo group, people in the azithromycin group on average had a 54 percent increase in the number of resistant bacteria at the end of four days, and the group receiving clarithromycin had an average 50 percent increase in resistant bacteria after eight days.
Overuse of antibiotics in farm animals and in people is the main cause of the dramatic increase in resistant bacteria in recent decades. Human antibiotics are commonly added to chicken, hog and cattle feed because they actually cause livestock to put on weight and because they protect the animals from their unhealthy living conditions.
Who's responsible for the overuse of antibiotics in humans? Doctors and patients are. National surveys have found that antibiotics are prescribed for 70 percent to 80 percent of sinus infections, even though viruses, which cannot be killed by antibiotics, cause most of these infections. Doctors often prescribe antibiotics uselessly for other viral illnesses like the common cold or flu because their patients persistently ask them to.
Inappropriate use of antibiotics means that all of us are ever more likely to harbor increasingly resistant and virulent bacteria that may not respond to the few remaining antibiotics we still have that can fight serious infections.
Already hospitals are overburdened with patients who must be placed in isolation to treat resistant bacterial infections. These stubborn diseases threaten the patient's life and prolong costly hospital stays.
Without limits on excessive antibiotic use in animals and people, the magnificent benefits of the antibiotic era may soon end. We may then find ourselves right back where we started, unable to save lives because we lack effective treatment for bacterial infections. Trivial infections we hardly think about today may once again become fatal.
