A deadly outbreak of drug-resistant superbugs in California has sparked new attention on legislation to create new antibiotics and prevent the spread of deadly bacteria.
Drug-resistant bacteria at a Los Angeles hospital killed two people and infected five others. The University of California-Los Angeles Medical Center is investigating whether at least 100 more were infected by contaminated tubes called endoscopes.
While drug-resistant infections aren’t new, the deadly outbreak has caused lawmakers and advocates to press for action. Each year drug-resistant bacteria sicken at least two million people and kill at least 23,000, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The latest outbreak “underscores the need” for legislation to invigorate the antibiotic pipeline, Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., said last week on Twitter.
“I think what we have seen is a renewed interest in how to prevent the transmission of these organisms,” Dr. Alex Kallen, a CDC medical officer, told the Washington Examiner.
Bennet and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, introduced a bill last month that speeds up government approval of new antibiotics, but so far the bill hasn’t made any headway. Companion legislation is also being considered in the House, but hasn’t been introduced yet.
A confluence of events has caused the antibiotic pipeline in the U.S. to wither, with drug makers fleeing the market due to cheap competition and burdensome regulations for clinical trials.
“Antibiotics just aren’t an attractive market compared to a lot of other drugs,” Allen Coukell, senior director for health programs at the think tank Pew Charitable Trusts, told the Washington Examiner.
A Pew analysis found 38 new antibiotics in development as of last September. But those numbers are deceiving.
Coukell said only one in five pharmaceuticals that start human testing get government approval. There are also very few antibiotics in development which target resistant infections such as gram-negative bacteria.
The absence of newer antibiotics has in some cases led doctors to rely on older antibiotics that could damage organs, Kallen said.
While the House and Senate legislation would get antibiotics approved much faster, it will also recommend the products only be prescribed to treat necessary infections.
This would address the problem of overprescribing antibiotics. The center reported that about half the time, antibiotics are either misused — such as giving the wrong dosage to a patient — or not needed at all.
An antibiotic will kill the bacteria in the body that is susceptible to the drug, but also leave behind microbes that are resistant to that antibiotic. The more antibiotics used, the more resistance is built up, Kallen said.
The center also notes much of antibiotic use in farm animals is unnecessary. Animals such as cows and pigs could develop resistant bacteria in their guts and pass that bacterium along to humans when they consume meat that isn’t cooked properly, CDC said.
In addition to legislation to stimulate antibiotic development, the Obama administration needs to ensure proper stewardship of antibiotics in hospitals, Coukell said.
That can be done through programs that delegate how an antibiotic is prescribed and managed.
The center has worked to spread the word about stewardship plans, but doesn’t have an estimate on how many hospitals have actually adopted them.
The administration could make establishing such a program a condition of receiving reimbursements from Medicare, Coukell said.
President Obama has moved to address the problem before, establishing a task force last year and allocating more than $1.2 billion in his 2016 budget to address the issue.
