What Are the Solutions for Antibiotic Resistance?
1. Collect Data
The European Union has detailed, 15-year data on antibiotic use by drug, and resistance data by microbe, covering 26 countries.[3] They know what and where the problems are. For example, Greece has the highest per capita use of antibiotics, and The Netherlands has among the lowest. The proportion of Klebsiella isolates that are carbapenemase-producing in Greece is 38%, and in The Netherlands it is 0.2%. The proportion of S aureus isolates that are methicillin-resistant is 58% in Greece and 1.6% in The Netherlands.[3] These data are strong testimony supporting the acknowledged association between antibiotic abuse and resistance, and they identify areas of great need for corrective intervention. In the United States, we have no comparable data.
2. Stop Antibiotic Use on the Farm
A full 80% of antibiotic use in the United States is for growth promotion and disease prevention in farm animals.[4] Resistant bacteria and resistance genes can be traced from the chickens to the chicken meat in grocery stores and, finally, to blood cultures in patients (The "farm to fork” phenomenon).[5] The practice of antibiotics for growth promotion on the farm was stopped in Denmark many years ago, with no apparent economic or animal health consequences.[6]
3. Practice Antibiotic Stewardship
Antibiotic stewardship has many elements:
• Use a procalcitonin level as a biomarker for infection to avoid unnecessary antibiotic use, as has been shown to be successful in nearly every well-controlled trial.[7]
• Short courses of antibiotics are virtually always effective in well-controlled trials.[3,8]
• Switch antibiotics from intravenous (IV) to oral formulations to hasten discharge and reduce risks associated with IV catheters. This switch is easily done with many antibiotics (linezolid, metronidazole, fluoroquinolones, some cephalosporins, fluconazole, etc).
• Use colistin carefully. Colistin, available since 1961, is increasingly needed but is saddled with dosing errors because the recommendations in the package insert are wrong.[9]