Malnourishment, antobiotics raising drug resistance

A study published in Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology is reporting an increase of Acinetobacter, a dangerous kind of bacteria that is becoming increasingly common in U.S. hospitals.

The study used data from 300 United States hospitals from 1999 to 2006. The data showed there was more than a 300 percent increase of proportion of Acinetobacter cases resistant to the drug. “The findings are troubling because they suggest this bacteria is becoming resistant to nearly everything in our arsenal," said Ramanan Laxminarayan, the principal investigator of Extending the Cure, a project examining antibiotic resistance at the Washington, D.C. based think-tank Resources for the Future. "There is a lot of attention on MRSA, but less on infections caused by bacteria like Acinetobacter for which there are fewer drugs in the development pipeline. While all drug resistance is of concern, it is particularly worrying in the case of bugs for which we have few treatment options." According to the researchers more than 65,000 people in the US died as a result of overuse of antibiotics in humans and animals last year. The United States uses 50 percent of the world's antibiotics, which comes to 35 million pounds a year. “This is a living breathing problem, it’s the big bad wolf and it’s knocking at our door. It’s here. It’s arrived.” says Dr. Vance Fowler, and infectious disease specialist at Duke University.John Hopkins University health scientist, Dr. Ellen Silbergeld states “there’s no doubt that drug use n farm animals is a major driver of antimicrobial resistance worldwide.” Scientists from the University of Illinois College of Medicine are stating that genetic analysis of human gastrointestinal tracts are home to over 100,000 billion individual micro-organisms and more that 90 percent of the cells in our bodies are non-human. Antibiotics kill off 90 percent of the cells in the body. This leads to a disruption of the ecosystem within cause a loss of the cells ability to talk to one another. This process has enabled superbugs to have the upper hand. “The body is a magnificent living, self-healing ecosystem and antibiotics are causing massive cellucide and disrupting the quorum language of immune cells, leaving us vulnerable to viruses," said Dr. Yanick, President of the American Academy of Quantum Medicine.