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KEEP ANTIBIOTICS WORKING.com
Keep Antibiotics Working (KAW)
(General Audience)
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Antibiotic Resistance
American College of Physicians (ACP)
(General Audience)
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When the antibiotics quit working...
The Why? Files™,
National Institute for Science Education (NISE),
Graduate School,
University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison)
(General Audience)
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Antibiotic Resistance in Wild American Bison
Compared With That of Farm Cattle
Science News,
ScienceDaily,
ScienceDaily LLC
[ 28 March 2008 ] (General Audience)
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Bacteria beware: MIT student invents knock-out punch
for antibiotic resistance
MIT News, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT),
[ 27 February 2008 ] (General Audience)
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DNA Pollution May Be Spawning Killer Microbes
Jessica Snyder Sachs,
Discover,
Discover Magazine
[ 14 February 2008 ] (General to Advanced Audience)
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GET SMART: Know When Antibiotics Work
Division of Bacterial Diseases,
National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases,
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
[ 6 August 2007 ] (General Audience)
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Innocuous Intestinal Bacteria May Be Reservoir for Resistance
What’s New in Media Information,
American Society for Microbiology (ASM)
[ 25 May 2006 ] (General Audience)
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About Antibiotic Resistance
Division of Bacterial Diseases,
National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases,
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
[ 21 April 2006 ] (General Audience)
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Bayer Commended for Ending 5-Year Opposition to
FDA Ban on Use of Cipro-like Antibiotics in Poultry
Keep Antibiotics Working (KAW),
[ 7 September 2005 ] (General Audience)
(Adobe PDF file)
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Study Explores Antibiotic Misuse
Toni Baker, Science/Medical News,
Medical College of Georgia (MCG)
[ 29 December 2004 ] (General Audience)
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Antibiotics alternatives to help reduce animal disease
Current Australian Research, Gene Technology in Australia,
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial
Research Organisation
(CSIRO)
[ 10 June 2004 ] (General Audience)
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‘Superbug’ Threat
Ramanan Laxminarayan & Mark Plotkin,
WashingtonPost.com,
The Washington Post Company
courtesy of Resources for the Future
[ 4 November 2003 ] (General Audience)
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FDA Announces Policy Designed To Curb
Animal-Antibiotics Use
Anna Wilde Mathews, The Wall Street Journal
courtesy of Keep Antibiotics Working (KAW)
[ 24 October 2003 ] (General Audience)
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OVERUSE CITED IN CIPRO INEFFECTIVENESS
Associated Press (AP),
courtesy of
Department of Epidemiology,
School of Public Health,
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
[ 19 February 2003 ] (General Audience)
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Antibiotics in animal feed not necessary
Danny Kingsley, News in Science,
Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)
[ 4 December 2002 ] (General Audience)
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Curtailing Antibiotic Use in Agriculture
Steve Heilig, Dr. Philip Lee & Dr. Lester Breslow,
Western Journal of Medicine (WJM),
January 2002,
courtesy of Keep Antibiotics Working (KAW)
(General Audience)
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CONFERENCE NEWS UPDATE:
101ST GENERAL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY
FOR MICROBIOLOGY
Pulmonary Reviews.Com, Vol. 6, No. 8,
Jobson Medical Group, Jobson Publishing
[ August 2001 ] (General Audience)
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Optimal Antibiotic Usage with Resistance and Endogenous Technological Change
Silvia Secchi & Bruce A. Babcock, Working Paper 01-WP 269,
Center for Agricultural and Rural Development
(CARD),
Iowa State University (ISU)
[ February 2001 ] (General to Technical Audience)
(Adobe PDF file)
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Surprising Uses and Benefits of Yogurt
Alan Greene, MD, FAAP, dr green.com,
Greene Ink, Inc.
[ 7 November 2000 ] (General Audience)
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The Rise of Antibiotic-Resistant Infections
Ricki Lewis, Ph.D., FDA Consumer magazine, September 1995,
U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
(General Audience)
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Antibiotics have been hailed as wonder drugs, and are
considered by many as one of the greatest medical breakthroughs of the
20th Century. It is this very popularity which has led to the demise
of some of our leading antibiotics and now poses a new and very real
health threat.
In the early years of antibiotic research and usage, bacterial
resistance to antibiotics was not regarded as a serious problem.
It was discovered, both through testing and through trial and error, that
different bacterial infections responded well to specific antibiotics.
If one antibiotic did not work to cure a particular infection, it would
be discontinued and another would be applied. This discovery process
eventually enabled physicians to accurately prescribe a particular
antibiotic or group of antibiotics to treat a specific pathogen.
Ultimately, a high level of confidence developed regarding use of
antibiotics; this confidence led to widespread usage, complacency,
and ultimately, misuse.
Antibiotic resistance usually develops when antibiotic usage is discontinued
prematurely (i.e., before the allotted time required to completely
eliminate an infection) or when antibiotics are prescribed
indiscriminately to treat minor or non-bacterial infections.
(Antibiotics are totally ineffective against viruses.) In recent years,
other sources of resistance have also been identified and are under active
study, including the considerable use of antibiotics at subtherapeutic
levels in livestock feed to promote growth. Antibiotic resistance is now
a widely recognized phenomenon and prescription of antibiotics is, for the
most part, more carefully scrutinized. (A recent classic misapplication
was the widespread and indiscriminate prescription of the broad-spectrum
antibiotic Cipro in the U.S. following the post-9/11 anthrax scare.)
However, the genie is already out of the bottle. Some of our most prized
and heralded antibiotics have been rendered practically worthless by new
strains of resistant bacteria. Modern medical science has become
extremely dependent upon antibiotics as a primary course of treatment for
many infectious diseases. A mad race is on by pharmaceutical companies
to develop new antibiotics able to conquer resistant strains of bacteria
responsible for such severe diseases as pneumonia and tuberculosis;
for the moment, it appears that the “bugs” may be winning. It
remains to be seen whether modern medical science can triumph over the tiny
disease-causing organisms that seem so able to adapt to our efforts to
eliminate them.
Authored by Kenneth L. Anderson.
Original article published 13 May 2003, updated 15 November
2003.
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