New, more effective antibiotics are being prescribed in only about a quarter of infections by carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), a family of the world’s most intractable drug-resistant bacteria, according to an analysis by infectious disease and pharmaceutical scientists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and published today by the journal Open Forum Infectious Diseases.
New, more effective antibiotics are being prescribed in only about a quarter of infections by carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), a family of the world’s most intractable drug-resistant bacteria, according to an analysis by infectious disease and pharmaceutical scientists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and published today by the journal Open Forum Infectious Diseases.
This sluggish uptake of such high-priority antibiotics prompted the researchers to call for an examination of clinical and pharmaceutical stewardship practices across U.S. hospitals, as well as behavioral and economic factors, to see if the trend can be reversed before lackluster sales lead the pharmaceutical industry to stop developing much-needed antibiotics.
“The infectious diseases community spent the past decade saying, ‘We need new antibiotics, this is a top priority,’ and now we’re at risk of sounding like the boy who cried wolf,” said lead author Cornelius J. Clancy, M.D., associate professor of medicine and director of the mycology program and XDR Pathogen Laboratory in Pitt’s Division of Infectious Diseases. “We have a responsibility to learn why it takes so long for antibiotics to be adopted into practice and figure out what we need to do to ensure the best antibiotics quickly reach the patients who desperately need them.”
Read more at University of Pittsburgh
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