Antibiotics are an important part of modern medicine, but overuse of them increases the risk of dangerous superbugs. This week, Henry Ford Hospital Infectious Disease Doctor Anita Shallal talked with WWJ about the World Health Organization’s warning that antibiotic resistance is surging.
“A superbug would be considered any kind of a bacteria that has displayed resistance to multiple classes of antibiotics,” Shallal explained.
She said that these superbugs often develop in people who have had frequent exposure to antibiotics or to healthcare settings. They’re not commonly spread in other communal settings, such as schools.
“They’re more common in hospitalized patients and clinics,” said Shallah. “However, they’ve been associated with repeat antibiotic exposure, so someone might have recurrent urinary tract infections and have repeat exposures to antibiotics, and eventually the bacteria is able to kind of outsmart the antibiotic and develop resistance mechanisms to the antibiotics. And the concern there would be that if a patient develops a drug-resistant infection, you know, there are many antibiotics, but not all antibiotics work for every bacteria.”
This resistance can have a domino effect. Shallah said that when antibiotics start to lose efficacy, it also impacts their ability to fight more common infections, such as pneumonia.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, antimicrobial resistance (AR) “is an urgent global public health threat,” and more than 2.8 million antimicrobial-resistant infections occur each year across the country. Shallah notes that the WHO has also called antibiotic resistance a threat to human health.
“Antibiotics are the cornerstone to our healthcare system,” Shallah told WWJ’s Christina McDaniel. “We need to use antibiotics for routine things like… strep throat, and all those other kinds of things but we also need them for surgical prophylaxis. Before someone has surgery, they need a dose of antibiotics. We use them in maternal health before women have their babies.”
Shallah said that it is important that antibiotics be used only when necessary to prevent resistance. She said it is a major issue around the world. Outside of the U.S., antibiotics are over the counter in some areas.
“I'm fortunate enough to get to do work globally, where this is certainly a problem in a lot of other countries where antibiotics are available over the counter, and you know, you don't need a prescription for them,” Shallah said. “But even here in the United States, we’re seeing a significant increase in the amount of drug resistant infections. And that’s probably related to travel from outside countries, but also due to exposure to antibiotics. You know, antibiotics are not just used in humans. They’re used in animal health. They are used in food crops and farms.”
When it comes to preventing and dealing with superbugs, Shallah said a good protocol is to avoid prescribing antibiotics to patients who likely have viral infections, since they will not help their condition.
“That’s really our best opportunity - these situations where antibiotics are not needed,” she explained. Additionally, consumers can search for foods that are antibiotic free when shopping at the grocery store, keeping vaccinations up to date, staying out of hospitals when possible and practicing good hand hygiene.