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Rising antibiotic resistance charted in study
NEWS IN BRIEF — Posted Jan. 4, 2010
A new study in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology found that drug-resistant strains of Acinetobacter are increasingly common in U.S. hospitals. The bacteria cause pneumonia and bloodstream infections and have recently been found in soldiers returning from Iraq.
Using data from a nationwide survey of 300 hospitals, researchers discovered a 300% increase from 1999 and 2006 in the percentage of Acinetobacter cases resistant to imipenem, an antibiotic often regarded as a last-line treatment. The study was posted online Dec. 23, 2009 (link).
"The findings are troubling because they suggest this bacteria is becoming resistant to nearly everything in our arsenal," said Ramanan Laxminarayan, PhD, MPH, the principal investigator and a senior fellow at Resources for the Future, a Washington think tank that is funded in part by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The study was conducted by Extending the Cure, a project of Resources for the Future that examines antibiotic resistance.
Note: This item originally appeared at http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2010/01/04/prbf0104.htm.












