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Facts About Antibiotic Resistance
Disease-causing microbes that have become resistant to drug
therapy are an increasing public health problem. Tuberculosis,
gonorrhea, malaria, and childhood ear infections are just a
few of the diseases that have become hard to treat with antibiotic
drugs.
Other facts:
- Though food-producing animals are given antibiotic drugs
for important therapeutic, disease prevention or production
reasons, these drugs can cause microbes to become resistant
to drugs used to treat human illness, ultimately making some
human sicknesses harder to treat.
- About 70 percent of bacteria that cause infections in hospitals
are resistant to at least one of the drugs most commonly
used to treat infections.
- Some organisms are resistant to all approved antibiotics
and must be treated with experimental and potentially toxic
drugs.
- Some research has shown that antibiotics are given to patients
more often than guidelines set by federal and other healthcare
organizations recommend. For example, patients sometimes
ask their doctors for antibiotics for a cold, cough, or the
flu, all of which are viral and don't respond to antibiotics.
Also, patients who are prescribed antibiotics but don't take
the full dosing regimen can contribute to resistance.
- Unless antibiotic resistance problems are detected as they
emerge, and actions are taken to contain them, the world
could be faced with previously treatable diseases that have
again become untreatable, as in the days before antibiotics
were developed.
