Bacteria race ahead of drugs
Last week, doctors at San Francisco General Hospital reported that a variant of that strain, resistant to six important antibiotics normally used to treat staph, may be transmitted by sexual contact and is spreading among gay men in San Francisco, Boston, New York and Los Angeles.
Yet the problem goes far beyond one bug and a handful of drugs. Entire classes of mainstay antibiotics are being threatened with obsolescence, and bugs far more dangerous than staph are evolving in ominous ways.
"We are on the verge of losing control of the situation, particularly in the hospitals," said Dr. Chip Chambers, chief of infectious disease at San Francisco General Hospital.
The reasons for increasing drug resistance are well known:
- Overuse of antibiotics, which speeds the natural evolution of bacteria, promoting new mutant strains resistant to those drugs.
- Careless prescribing of antibiotics that aren't effective for the malady in question, such as a viral infection.
- Patient demand for antibiotics when they aren't needed.
Heavy use of antibiotics in poultry and livestock feed, which can breed resistance to similar drugs for people.
Germ strains that interbreed at hospitals, where infection controls as simple as hand-washing are lax.
All this is happening while the supply of new antibiotics from drug company laboratories is running dry.
