The Republic 19/9/2008
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY The alarm of scientists in The Lancet: Medicine is likely to go back
more you use drugs, the lower the effectiveness and develop resistant strains
arrives bacterium is the defeat of the invincible
antibiotics
ELENA Dusi
Antibiotics changed the world. "But now we risk returning to a world without antibiotics," warned an editorial in today's British Medical Journal. Not that drugs are disappearing from shelves, in fact. In Italy each person consumes more than two packages each year. But the speed with which bacteria can survive our medicines is much higher than the rate at which pharmaceutical companies are developing new weapons. Just goes back to 1998, the World Health Organisation's first call for the responsible use of these drugs.
Ten years later, the race between white coats and bacilli sees second gear at higher speeds. "The greatest successes of modern medicine at risk of failing. Without the effectiveness of antibiotics, surgery, organ transplants and chemotherapy against tumors would be unthinkable" says Otto Cars, professor at the University Uppsala from a life that is responsible for antibiotic resistance.
erosion is slow, and this goes unnoticed. But every time you use an antibiotic, some bacteria surviving treatment. The resistant strain multiplies and strengthens the principle of natural selection. The next time the antibiotic is used to clear an infection, will have the same effect as cold water. Before the failure of a drug, the only way is to find an alternative.
"But the use and abuse of antibiotics - explains Cars - coincides with a slowdown in developing new medicines." Between 1930 and 1969, more than a dozen new classes of antibiotics have entered into production. But since 1970 have been identified only two new classes. And if you go to count the individual labels approved by the U.S. healthcare system, from 16 in the five years 1983-87 was passed at 7 to 1998-2002.
armored Prince of bacteria to antibiotics in front, meanwhile, is reported more frequently in hospitals. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) causes various kinds of infections, including a severe form of pneumonia. While in 1989 strains of Staphylococcus aureus sensitive to antibiotics accounted for 99 percent of all those isolated in 2002 on two well-infection was instead caused by drug-resistant strains, and also rejected the sender's attacks vehement launched by white coats. The deaths in UK hospitals where MRSA is mentioned in the medical record increased from 50 in 1993 to an impressive 1600-2006.
The news of the pharmaceutical industry to describe ongoing experiments to derive new classes of antibiotics from the silkworm, honey, and even blood of the crocodile. But none of these roads is keeping its promises. "We take the 15 largest companies in the world" continues Cars. "Only one, 6 percent of new medicines in the developing world belongs to the category of antibiotics." With two billion passengers annually transport aircraft across the globe and the worldwide distribution of food, then, super-resistant bacteria do not know more borders. And knowing that the figure of 70 per cent of neonatal infections become insensitive to the drugs come from faraway Tanzania is not enough to reassure. When
between 1928 and 1929 Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin and gave the world the opportunity to make harmless infections that were fatal, he gave the world a true "public good". With antibiotics, the failure of an individual is paid by all. "Every time that each of us consumes a dose, inevitably exhausts a fraction of its effectiveness," notes Cars. Just a single wrong therapy to bring about a more resistant strain and we have lost in the mile race for men and bacteria.
(September 19 2008)
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