In the "sky is falling" category this abstract just published in Nature Medicine:
Published online: 10 March 2003, doi:10.1038/nm839
Geographic diversity and temporal trends of antimicrobial resistance in Streptococcus pneumoniae in the United States
Althea W. McCormick1, Cynthia G. Whitney2, Monica M. Farley3, Ruth Lynfield4, Lee H. Harrison5, Nancy M. Bennett6, William Schaffner7, Arthur Reingold8, James Hadler9, Paul Cieslak10, Matthew H. Samore11 & Marc Lipsitch1
Resistance of Streptococcus pneumoniae to antibiotics is increasing throughout the United States, with substantial variation among geographic regions. We show that patterns of geographic variation are best explained by the intensity of selection for resistance, which is reflected by differences between the proportions of resistance within individual serotypes, rather than by differences between the frequencies of particular serotypes. Using a mathematical transmission model, we analyzed temporal trends in the proportions of singly and dually resistant organisms and found that pneumococcal strains resistant to both penicillin and erythromycin are increasing faster than strains singly resistant to either. Using the model, we predict that by 1 July 2004, in the absence of a vaccine, 41% of pneumococci at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)'s Active Bacterial Core surveillance (ABCs) sites, taken together, will be dually resistant, with 5% resistant to penicillin only and 5% to erythromycin only.
(emphasis added)
For this particular class of bugs there is now an approved vaccine that can be given to children, which may serve to hold this part of the sky up a while longer.
But in terms of threat to US public health and distribution of research dollars, I see antibiotic research as markedly under-funded. Most of the pharma no longer seem that interested and only a few biotechs (CBST, ITMN and VERS) seem to be players - the first two with cast-offs from pharmas, incidentally.
Peter |
