Antibiotic resistance 'crisis looms'

Excess and inappropriate use of antibiotics needs to be curbed because antibiotic resistant infections are increasing "at an alarming pace," public health experts say.

To mark global Antibiotic Awareness Week, The Lancet Infectious Diseases published an editorial and six commentaries by medical experts highlighting common themes in Europe, the U.S., Canada and Australia.

"A crisis looms," the editorial begins. "In the very near and rapidly approaching future, the wonder drugs of the 20th century, antibiotics, may cease to be useful."

The editorial points to three factors driving antibiotic resistance:

• Pointless prescriptions for viral infections.
• Adding antibiotics to animal feed to boost growth of livestock.
• Handing out antibiotics "like cough sweets in the community."

The journal editors said it will take national and international political commitment and investment to overcome the threat of antibiotic resistance and finance new drug development, which they said may need new approaches to funding, licensing and patenting.

"Without antibiotics, treatments from minor surgery to major transplants could become impossible, and health-care costs are likely to spiral as we resort to newer more expensive antibiotics and sustain longer hospital admissions," Sally Davies, the U.K.'s chief medical officer, and her co-authors said in one of the papers.

• Antibiotic progress on superbugs called 'alarmingly slow'

This week's campaign in Canada using social media aims to build awareness among health practitioners, animal health experts, patients, and the general public about the prudent use of antibiotics, according to one of the commentaries.

The warning is the latest on overuse and misuse of antibiotics. Last week, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said the proportion of infections resistant to carbapenems a powerful class of antibiotics has increased sharply in Europe in the last four years.