Resistance

Many improvements in medical technology and lifesaving interventions depend on the availability of effective antibiotics for the most vulnerable patient population. Global health data points to escalating levels of bacterial resistance that threaten the advances of modern medicine. The ECDC estimates that about 25,000 patients die each year in the EU from infection with multi-drug resistant bacteria resulting in added health care costs and productivity losses of at least EUR 1.5 billion each year. For some infections, no active antibiotic is currently available.  At the same time, discovery of novel antibiotics has slowed to a crawl and the gap between the burden of infections due to multi-drug resistant bacteria and the development of new antibiotics threatens previous advances of medical science.

A few examples of common multi-drug resistant pathogens:

Healthcare-associated Community-associated
Staphylococcus aureus Staphylococcus aureus
Enterococcus spp. (especially E. faecium) Streptococcus pneumoniae
Enterobacteriaceae (e.g. Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae) Escherichia coli
Pseudomonas aeruginosa Neisseria gonorrhoeae
Acinetobacter Salmonella sp.

Worldwide resistance hot spots (Theuretzbacher U. Global antibacterial resistance: The never-ending story. J Global Antimicrob Resist, 2013,1:63–69):

Worldwide resistance

The spread of carbapenem-non-susceptible bacteria, more specifically of carbapenemase-producing Enterobacteriaceae (CPE) and carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii (CRAb), is a threat to healthcare and patient safety. These bacteria are usually co-resistant to unrelated antibacterial drug classes and thus, extensively drug resistant or pan-drug resistant (no active drug available). The recently published report issued by ECDC summarises the results of a survey and demonstrates that CPE and CRAb are increasingly spreading in Europe.

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