Keep casting. Cipro may be losing its punch
SALT LAKE CITY -. A ten-year study in 10 hospitals provided new evidence that one of the major classes of antibiotics is losing its effectiveness. The study, presented here on May 20 at the General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology, shows that hospital use so-called fluoroquinolones has increased significantly, so has bacterial resistance to these drugs.
fluoroquinolones are a broad class of antibiotics widely used. His most popular member is ciprofloxacin, or Cipro - antibiotic coal-slaying fame - that doctors prescribe to treat more than 15 types of bacterial infections. Experts have warned for some time that the overuse of fluoroquinolones lead to increased resistance, but cutting their use has been difficult. This is particularly worrying because a bug that is resistant to fluoroquinolone usually survives the others.
Marcus Zervos and Ellie Hershberger William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan, and colleagues at nine other hospitals followed the use of all fluoroquinolones during the last decade, while frequently testing the sensitivity of the four microbes that cause infection - Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli and Proteus mirabilis - to ciprofloxacin. They found that in all but one hospital, the use of fluoroquinolones, expressed as the number of doses administered to the patient daily on average, had increased - in one case by 264%. At the same time, the four bacteria became less sensitive, and more in hospitals where the use climbed.
In one hospital where antibiotic use declined, however, Cipro had lost some of its punch, and he had even become more effective in killing Pseudomonas . The decrease in Pseudomonas susceptibility to Cipro in nine hospitals - which ranged from 4% to 45% - is particularly disturbing, the researchers say, since some other drugs can fight against this microbe
colleagues say the study - one of several on the increasing resistance presented at the meeting - is another warning sign that doctors might soon be left without their most powerful weapons. And the liberal prescribing practices is only one of the causes of the problem, says Stuart Levy, a microbiologist at Tufts University in Boston and president of the Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics (APUA). Another major cause is the use of antibiotics as growth promoters in livestock ( Science , 5 May 00, p 792.) - a practice that APUA hope soon be banned
Related Sites
learn more about fluoroquinolones
Alliance for the prudent use of antibiotics
Program of the American Society for Microbiology general meeting, with finder abstract
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