CDC Report Details Threat Of Antibiotic-Resistant Microbes. A report from the CDC detailing the potential threat posed by antibiotic-resistance microbes received extensive coverage in many of the nation’s most widely-circulated newspapers, on several major websites, and on one of last night’s national news broadcasts. CDC Director Thomas Frieden, who stressed the urgency of the situation, is quoted in most articles. The CBS Evening News reported, “The CDC says that each year more than 2 million Americans are infected with bacteria that resist antibiotics and” these infections lead to more than 23,000 deaths. According to the Washington Post (9/16), “in a 114-page report (pdf), the agency detailed for the first time the toll that nearly two dozen antibiotic-resistant microbes are taking on humans – ranking the threat of each as ‘urgent,’ ‘serious’ or ‘concerning.’” On the CDC’s “urgent” list are carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), Neisseria gonorrhoeae, and Clostridium difficile. The Wall Street Journal (9/17, A3, McKay, Subscription Publication) reports that during a phone conference with reporters, Frieden said, “If we’re not careful and we don’t take action, the medicine cabinet may be empty for patients with life-threatening infections in the coming months and years.” The New York Times (9/17, A13, Tavernise, Subscription Publication) reports that “Dr. Steven L. Solomon, the director of the C.D.C.’s office of antimicrobial resistance, acknowledged that the report underestimated the numbers, but said that was by design,” as the “researchers were instructed to be conservative and to base their calculations only on deaths that were a direct result of a drug-resistant bacterial infection.” According to Dr. Solomon, “We wanted the cleanest number, the least subjective number.” USA Today (9/17, Painter) reports that the CDC points out that there are a number of ways to combat “the problem, but the most important is to ‘change the way antibiotics are used,’ by cutting unneeded use in humans and animals and using the right antibiotics in the right way when they are” required. Meanwhile, “patients and family members can do their part by asking about the medicines they are prescribed and questioning infection control in hospitals and other health care facilities, says Michael Bell, deputy director of CDC’s division of health care quality promotion.” Bloomberg News (9/17, Lopatto) reports that Solomon said that previously, “there was a sense that resistance wasn’t a huge problem because there would always be another antibiotic coming down the pipe, and for 50 to 60 years, that was kind of true.” However, that is no longer the case. Also covering the story are The Oregonian (9/17, Terry), the Boston Globe (9/17, Kotz), the Los Angeles Times (9/17, Brown) “Science Now” blog, the Long Island (NY) Newsday (9/17, Ricks), McClatchy (9/17, Pugh), Minnesota Public Radio (9/17, Benson), CNN (9/17, Falco), the CBS News (9/17, Castillo) website, and the NBC News (9/17, Fox) website. Studies Examine MRSA Incidence Rates, Infection Risks. USA Today (9/17, Szabo) reports that, according to a study (9/17) published Sept. 16 in JAMA Internal Medicine, “living near a hog farm or a field fertilized with pig manure significantly increases the risk of being infected with” the superbug methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), “which caused more than 80,000 invasive infections in the USA in 2011.” The Los Angeles Times (9/17, Brown) reports that a second study (9/17) in the same issue found that the number of estimated MRSA cases “fell more than 30% in the US between 2005 and 2011, suggesting that heightened efforts to combat the infections in hospitals had made a difference.”
Posted on: Tue, 17 Sep 2013 12:05:38 +0000
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