Drug-resistant 'superbugs' deemed urgent threats, CDC says

Antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea, a diarrhea-causing superbug and a class of fast-growing killer bacteria dubbed a "nightmare" were classified as urgent public-health threats in the United States on Monday.

According to a new report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), at least 2 million people in the United States develop serious bacterial infections that are resistant to one or more types of antibiotics each year, and at least 23,000 die from the infections.

"For organism after organism, we're seeing this steady increase in resistance rates," Dr Thomas Frieden, director of the CDC, said in a telephone interview. "We don't have new drugs about to come out of the pipeline. If and when we get new drugs, unless we do a better job of protecting them, we'll lose those, also."

Overprescribing of antibiotics is a chief cause of antibiotic resistance, affording pathogens the opportunity to outwit the drugs used to treat them. Only a handful of new antibiotics have been developed and brought to market in the past few decades, and only a few companies are working on drugs to replace them.

In addition to resistant gonorrhea, the others now seen as urgent threats, according to the first-of-its-kind report released on Monday, are C. difficile and the killer class known as carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae, or CRE. Read more >>

FDA may ban antibacterial soaps

It's a chemical that's been in U.S. households for more than 40 years, from the body wash in your bathroom shower to the knives on your kitchen counter to the bedding in your baby's basinet.

But federal health regulators are just now deciding whether triclosan - the germ-killing ingredient found in an estimated 75 percent of antibacterial liquid soaps and body washes sold in the U.S. - is ineffective, or worse, harmful.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is planning to deliver a review this year of whether triclosan is safe. The ruling, which will determine whether triclosan continues to be used in household cleaners, could have implications for a $1 billion industry that includes hundreds of antibacterial products from toothpaste to toys.

The agency's review comes amid growing pressure from lawmakers, consumer advocates and others who are concerned about the safety of triclosan. Recent studies of triclosan in animals have led scientists to worry that it could increase the risk of infertility, early puberty and other hormone-related problems in humans. Read more >>

UK Chief Medical Officer: Resistance to antibiotics risks health 'catastrophe' to rank with terrorism

Britain's health system could slip back by 200 years unless the "catastrophic threat" of antibiotic resistance is successfully tackled, the Government's Chief Medical Officer warns today.

In her first annual report, Dame Sally Davies says the problem of microbes becoming increasingly resistant to the most powerful drugs should be ranked alongside terrorism and climate change on the list of critical risks to the nation.

The growing ineffectiveness of many antibiotics against infection is being compounded by a "discovery void", as few new compounds are being developed to take their place. Dame Sally calls for a string of actions to tackle the threat, which is likely to include tighter restrictions on how GPs prescribe antibiotics for their patients.

Declaring that in 20 years' time even minor surgery may lead to death through untreatable infection, she warns: "This is a growing problem, and if we don't get it right, we will find ourselves in a health system not dissimilar from the early 19th century." Read more >>

Antibiotic-resistant diseases pose 'apocalyptic' threat, top expert says

Britain's most senior medical adviser has warned MPs that the rise in drug-resistant diseases could trigger a national emergency comparable to a catastrophic terrorist attack, pandemic flu or major coastal flooding.

Dame Sally Davies, the chief medical officer, said the threat from infections that are resistant to frontline antibiotics was so serious that the issue should be added to the government's national risk register of civil emergencies.

She described what she called an "apocalyptic scenario" where people going for simple operations in 20 years' time die of routine infections "because we have run out of antibiotics".

The register was established in 2008 to advise the public and businesses on national emergencies that Britain could face in the next five years. The highest priority risks on the latest register include a deadly flu outbreak, catastrophic terrorist attacks, and major flooding on the scale of 1953, the last occasion on which a national emergency was declared in the UK.

Speaking to MPs on the Commons science and technology committee, Davies said she would ask the Cabinet Office to add antibiotic resistance to the national risk register in the light of an annual report on infectious disease she will publish in March. Read more >>

Majority of U.S. pork supply tainted with deadly drugs, bacteria

Steamed Rice Rolls with Pork Loaf and Sour Pork - Thien An, Footscray AUD8.50 (Photo credit: avlxyz)

(NaturalNews) The next time you reach for the bacon, ham, pork chops or pork steaks, you may want to rethink your dining choice: A majority of samples of "the other white meat" that were obtained in a recent study contained bacteria, potentially deadly drugs or a combination of both.

According to Consumer Reports, samples of U.S. pork chops and ground pork were found to contain substantial amounts of harmful, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, along with low levels of a type of growth hormone used on pigs.

"Our analysis of pork-chop and ground-pork samples from around the U.S. found that yersinia enterocolitica, a bacterium that can cause fever, diarrhea, and abdominal pain, was widespread. Some samples harbored other potentially harmful bacteria, including salmonella," the magazine said in a recent report.

No drugs should be used on healthy animals to promote growth

Of 198 samples, some of the bacteria found by the CR investigation were resistant to antibiotics that are commonly used to treat humans. That's likely due to the "frequent use of low-dose antibiotics in pork farming" which "may be accelerating the growth of drug-resistant 'superbugs' that threaten human health," said the magazine. Read more >>