Overuse of antibiotics rendering drugs useless

By Emily Richmond (contact)

Thursday, Aug. 9, 2001 | 10:46 a.m.

Nevada residents who misuse antibiotics are putting themselves and the rest of the population at risk for developing more serious illnesses that will ultimately be more difficult to treat, county and state health officials said today.

Antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria are flourishing because too many people are taking the powerful drugs when it isn't necessary, health officials say.

An extremely rare strain of antibiotic-resistant bacteria turned up in Clark County last spring, when a 26-year-old woman developed a post-operative infection that didn't respond to normal treatment. The woman, a nurse, was just the sixth person in the country to develop the infection and the only surviving patient, said Donna Riddle, an epidemiologist with the county health district.

The young woman developed a staph infection that didn't respond to vancomycin, a powerful antibiotic used to treat an infection when all other treatments fail.

The woman's illness has resulted in the Nevadans for Antibiotic Awareness task force, the formation of which will be announced Friday at the Clark County Health District office on Shadow Lane.

Antibiotics were discovered by Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming in 1928. The drugs, which have been widely available since the 1940s, are used to treat illnesses caused by bacteria, such as strep throat. The drugs do not work on illnesses caused by viruses, such as a cold or the flu.

Dr. Andrew Eisen, a pediatrician and assistant professor at the University of Nevada School of Medicine, said it can be difficult to convince a patient that he doesn't need antibiotics. Eisen said it's even tougher to tell a parent of a sick child that an illness must simply run its course.

"We've developed a culture in this country that when you feel sick you go to the doctor and get medicine," Eisen said. "It's gotten to the point that we've misused some antibiotics so badly that they've become useless."

Antibiotics have become so common worldwide that many infections cannot be treated as easily as they once were, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

Since 1996 the rate of resistance to penicillin used to treat streptococcus pneumoniae bacteria has increased more than 300 percent, the CDC said.

Eisen said that, in Nevada, the resistance of penicillin to treat pneumonococus -- a bacteria that causes diseases such as pneumonia -- happens about 30 or 40 percent of the time, exceeding the national average.

The number of antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains, both in and out of hospitals, are increasing in Nevada, said Dr. Christine Petersen, a task force member and chief medical officer for Sierra Health Services, the parent company of the Health Plan of Nevada. The resistant strains can be difficult to treat and may require lengthy stays in the hospital, Petersen said.

The rise in antibiotic resistance has several causes, Petersen said. In some cases doctors may be handing out prescriptions for antibiotics too readily. But even more common, she said, are instances of people getting medications from friends or neighbors and parents using antibiotics that had been prescribed for their children, she said.

Some people bring back antibiotics from shopping trips to Mexico, Petersen said. Another common problem involves patients who don't finish a cycle of prescribed antibiotics because they begin to feel better.

"They save the pills in their medicine cabinet and then take them later the next time they feel sick," Petersen said.

The popularity of anti-bacterial soaps may also have contributed to the rise in resistant bacteria, Petersen said.

Antibiotic-resistant infections also are becoming more prevalent in people, including children, treated on an out-patient basis, Eisen said.

"When we throw antibiotics around, all the bacteria that's out there is seeing them more than they should," Eisen said. "You're pressuring the bacteria, in an evolutionary sense, to become more resistant."