Antibiotics are losing their magic touch

Researchers at the Centre for Disease Control (Atlanta, USA) have estimated that some 50 million of the 150 million prescriptions for antibiotics every year are unneeded (Levy, 1999). It may seen contradictory, even absurd, but patients at hospitals, where there is wide use of antibiotics and antiseptics, are also likely to catch a resistant strain of bacteria. Widespread use of cephalosporin antibiotics, for example, has promoted the proliferation of the once benign intestinal bacterium E. faecalis, which is naturally resistant to those drugs. In most people, the immune system is able to check the growth of even multi-drug resistant E. faecalis so that it does not cause illness. But in hospitalised patients with compromised immunity, the enterococcus can spread to the heart valves and other organs and establish deadly systemic disease. Another situation where antibiotic resistance is prevalent is in crowded unhygienic environments. A study carried out in the Central Prison in Baku, Azerbaijan, points out that 'tuberculosis is more common within prison populations than in the general population because of overcrowding, insufficient ventilation, poor hygiene and general socio-economic status, poor nutrition, and poor general health of inmates' (Connix, 1999). What is even worse is that a staggering 55% of patients had strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis resistant to two or more antibiotics (MDR-TB), including rifampicin and isoniazid. Furthermore, mortality during treatment was 11% and overall treatment was successful in only 54% of cases. One can imagine the gravity of the situation when taking into account how easy it is for bacteria to spread within a population, or even the whole world. The consequences of the spread of this strain of MDR-TB would be disastrous. Exposure to antibiotics through foodstuffs is also fairly widespread. The same drugs used for human therapy are widely exploited in animal husbandry and agriculture. For example, more than 40% of the antibiotics manufactured in the United States are given to animals. Some of that amount goes to treating or preventing infections, but the major part is mixed to animal feed to promote growth. In this application, amounts too small to combat infections are delivered for weeks or months at a time. This long term exposure to low doses is the perfect formula for selecting increasing numbers of resistant bacteria in the treated animals, which may pass them to caretakers and more broadly to people who prepare and consume undercooked meat. In agriculture, antibiotics are applied as aerosols to fruit trees. Apart

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