Drug-Resistant Superbugs Sweeping Across Europe

Pierre Bezukhov writes "Klebsiella pneumoniae is a common cause of pneumonia, urinary tract, and bloodstream infections in hospital patients. The superbug form is resistant even to a class of medicines called carbapenems, the most powerful known antibiotics, which are usually reserved by doctors as a last line of defense. The ECDC said several EU member states were now reporting that between 15 and up to 50 percent of K. pneumoniae from bloodstream infections were resistant to carbapenems. To a large extent, antibiotic resistance is driven by the misuse and overuse of antibiotics, which encourages bacteria to develop new ways of overcoming them. Experts say primary care doctors are partly to blame for prescribing antibiotics for patients who demand them unnecessarily, and hospitals are also guilty of overuse."

Comments

VS

[Anonymous Coward]

Any reason why this would not be the case in the US?

Re:VS

[Dr_Barnowl]

It's actually more likely to build resistance - because USians pay for their medicine, they are much less likely to complete a course of antibiotics.

The article misrepresents the position - antibiotics don't "encourage bacteria to develop new ways of overcoming them", they just leave behind bacteria that have more resistance. It's therefore very important to go Darth Sidious on their ass and "wipe them out. All of them.", or the few that remain will multiply, unobstructed by their cream-puff peers who are all dead now.

Paying for your medicine gives you an incentive to stop taking it as soon as you feel well, rather then comply with the advice of your doctor and finish the course. A lot of people save the remainder of the course for future illnesses.

The doctor has no incentive to refuse you antibiotics, as pointed out by siblings. Because your perception of his care matters to his paycheck, he's far more likely to prescribe them. Even in a socialised healthcare system, doctors will prescribe antibiotics just to get the patient out of their office so they can see the next one.

This doesn't take into account that the other thing that USians do / did with antibiotics (do they still do this?) is feed them to their livestock. If the animal isn't funding the growth of bacteria with it's nutrients, it will grow more itself. Alas, this also promotes resistance.

The pharma companies have no incentive to fix this either, because they can sell newer (often less effective) antibiotics that have less communal resistance. They are ecstatic that the old antibiotics no longer work, because they are out of patent and anyone could make them for a few pennies a dose. Instead they can sell "last line" drugs that cost upwards of $100 a day.

Re:...and patients who don't complete the course

[Anonymous Coward]

Which makes them better (or different) from medieval idiots... how, exactly?

The root cause remains an "ignorant" (your vocabulary) assumption that illness = bacteria. Bacteria are killed by magic drugs whose formulation and mechanism(s) of action most simply lack the education to understand. Because I am ill, the patient believes, I must seek this magic medicine to make the illness go away. Thus, even when a doctor says, "This magic medicine will do nothing," the patient insists that they receive it, presupposing the evil doctor must be withholding life-saving treatment to increase return visits. Despite the absence of education, the patient knows the medicine will work, denying physics, chemistry, and biology in the process.

The critical failure occurs when the patient makes the anecdotal correlation between close friends' or relatives' medical condition(s) manifesting in a similar way - this is a fundamental flaw in human cognition, not an effect that can be solved with the assumption that "modern" fools are not medieval idiots. They are medieval idiots - just with shinier toys.

Re:I wonder

[hairyfeet]

Don't forget the sewer systems and water supplies. I remember reading in a magazine how many drugs could be found in your average river because the sewer systems end up one way or another into the rivers, be it leaking pipes, floods, etc and you end up with all these drugs from antibiotics to painkillers to hormones in the water supply. Then of course fish absorb the drugs, animals and people absorb the fish, and around it goes.

And finally let us not forget the massive bribes...err I mean "incentives" the drug companies give out to doctors. I could always tell which drug my local doc was getting a nice vacation package from because that is what he is pushing for EVERYTHING, funnily enough the current one fits right into TFA because his handout drug ATM is an antibiotic called Z-Pac.