It's official: the US's antibiotic army is on its last legs.
A report this week from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that bacteria resistant to antibiotics kill 23,000 Americans each year and infect 2 million. "If we don't act now, our medicine cabinet will be empty and we won't have the antibiotics we need to save lives," warns Tom Frieden, director of the CDC.
The report's findings have raised the pressure on the US Food and Drug Administration to ban farm owners from giving antibiotics to livestock simply to fatten them up. This widespread practice – which accounts for 80 per cent of all antibiotic use in the US – increases the risk of resistant strains developing and spreading to hospitals. The FDA is currently implementing a strategy that it says promotes judicious use of antibiotics on farms – but only on a voluntary basis.
Frieden, however, says that the most acute problem is in humans. "Most resistant organisms in hospitals are emerging because of bad antimicrobial stewardship," he says. The report concludes that half the antibiotics doctors prescribe are not needed, but concedes that much of antibiotic use in animals is also unnecessary.
"To fully overcome this threat, we need to put a stop to all inappropriate antibiotic use, meaning we cannot ignore the rampant misuse of antibiotics in livestock," says Mae Wu of the Natural Resources Defense Council lobby group in Washington DC. She says the FDA's guidelines leave gaping holes that allow antibiotics to be used on healthy animals under the guise of disease prevention.
The CDC report coincides with another study that suggests as many as 11 per cent of superbug infections in Pennsylvania residents between 2005 and 2010 originated from pig manure spread on nearby fields (JAMA Internal Medicine, doi.org/nt7).
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