Broad-spectrum antibiotics may give rise to drug-resistant super bugs
Washington, August 27 : University of Melbourne researchers suggest that doctors avoid
prescribing expensive broad-spectrum antibiotics for pneumonia to avoid the development of
more drug-resistant super bugs.
Dr. Patrick Charles, a PhD researcher and Austin Health Infectious Diseases consultant,
says that only five per cent of people admitted to hospital with community-acquired
pneumonia have infections caused by organisms that can not be successfully treated with
the combination of penicillin and an "atypical" antibiotic, such as doxycycline or
erythromycin.
He came to this conclusion after analysing samples of blood, urine, sputum and viral
swabs of the nose and throat taken from 885 patients admitted to six Australian hospitals
over 28 months from 2004 to 2006.
The study revealed that most cases of pneumonia were caused by easy to treat bacteria
such as the pneumococcus or Mycoplasma, or alternatively by respiratory viruses that do
not require antibiotic therapy.
"The study results show that current Australian guidelines for prescribing antibiotics
for pneumonia are appropriate. It shows that Australian doctors should resist the push
which is occurring in some parts of the world - particularly the US - to prescribe broad
spectrum antibiotics to treat essentially all possible causes,'' Dr. Charles said.
He said that the trend towards broad-spectrum antibiotics was being driven by
laboratory-based studies, wherein the bacterial isolates would often come from highly
selected patients with more difficult to treat disease.
He also highlighted the fact that the fear of litigation made some doctors
unnecessarily opt for more aggressive treatments.
"The emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacterial pathogens is one of the biggest
threats to Australian health care standards and is closely linked to the inappropriate use
of antibiotics. By continuing to use more traditional antibiotics to treat most cases of
pneumonia, Australian doctors can limit or delay the emergence of more resistant strains
of bacteria,'' he said.
"By using the broad-spectrum antibiotics less often, we can also prolong the effective
lifespan of these drugs. Furthermore, in the US, Canada and some parts of Europe, they are
seeing some serious complications which appear to be related to the overuse of some
classes of broad-spectrum antibiotics that are frequently used there to treat respiratory
infections," he added.
--ANI
