Drug-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae bacteria
People suffering from bronchitis, flu, and other ailments often leave their doctor’s office with a prescription for antibiotics—even though in many cases it will do nothing to help them. Nearly one-third of the antibiotics taken in this country are unnecessary, says the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), despite decades of warnings that overprescribing is helping fuel the alarming surge in drug-resistant superbugs. All told, the study found, some 47 million unwarranted antibiotic prescriptions are being written out each year. Many of them are for viral illnesses the drugs can’t treat, such as colds and sore throats, or for sinus infections, typically caused by fungi that aren’t affected by antibiotics. The researchers say it’s likely they’ve even underestimated the problem, because they didn’t consider antibiotics doled out over the phone and in urgent-care centers, or cases in which doctors prescribed the wrong antibiotic to treat a genuine bacterial infection. The danger of overprescribing is that once bacteria are exposed to an antibiotic, they start learning how to outsmart it, rendering that drug less effective or even useless. More than 2 million people a year are infected by drug-resistant germs, and some 23,000 die of their infections. If inappropriate antibiotic use continues, CDC Director Tom Frieden tells NBCNews.com, “we’ll lose the most powerful tool we have to fight life-threatening infections.”
THE WEEK
May 20, 2016
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