news break
mmckenna | July 7, 2010(You leave the country for a few days -- I spoke at a conference in Brussels, which was was lovely, thanks for asking -- and all kinds of news breaks out. So, sorry to be late on this, but it's an important issue.)
Last week, the Food and Drug Adminstration took the first (baby, mincing, tentative) steps to address the problem of antibiotics being used in animal agriculture, not to treat disease, but to make animals grow up to market weight faster. This practice -- variously called subtherapeutic dosing, growth promotion, and "for production purposes" in the FDA's exceedingly careful…
mmckenna | June 24, 2010There's a troubling item in this afternoon's issue of the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report or MMWR: The first report in the United States of a novel resistance mechanism that renders gram-negative bacteria extremely drug-resistant and that has been linked to medical care carried out in India or Pakistan.
The short item describes three isolates (E. coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Enterobacter cloacae) found in three patients in three states between January and June of this year. All three isolates produced New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase (NDM-1), which has never been recorded in…
mmckenna | June 15, 2010The Center for Global Development, a DC think-tank, is releasing what looks like a thoughtful report aimed at refocusing policy debates over drug resistance toward the epidemic's global impact, with particular attention to the the developing world.
From the report's preface:
Problems with drug resistance have moved from the patient's bedside to threaten global public health. Drug resistance has dramatically increased the costs of fighting tuberculosis (TB) and malaria, has slowed gains against childhood dysentery and pneumonia, and threatens to undermine the push to treat people living with…
mmckenna | June 8, 2010The Subcommittee on Health of the Energy and Commerce Committee of the House of Representatives has announced a hearing for Wednesday: "Promoting the Development of Antibiotics and Ensuring Judicious Use in Humans."
The witness line-up is:
Janet Woodcock, M.D., Director, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, Food and Drug Administration
Robin Robinson, Ph.D., Director, Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, Department of Health and Human Services
Brad Spellberg, M.D., F.I.D.S.A., Associate Professor of Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and Member,…