Potential antibiotic resistance threat looms: 5 study notes

Failure to prevent the emergence of antibiotic resistant bacteria could result in an 18-fold increase of sepsis deaths in the U.S., according to a study published Dec. 26 in Communications Medicine

Researchers from Flagstaff-based Northern Arizona University, Washington, D.C.-based George Washington University and Minneapolis-based University of Minnesota used publicly available and de-identified data to model the effect a single, hypothetical strain of pan-resistant E. coli could have on sepsis mortality.

Here are five notes from the study:

  1. Multi-drug resistance, when a bacteria is resistant to three or more antibiotics, has become more common in sepsis-causing bacteria, the researchers said. Pan-resistance can occur if a bacteria becomes resistant to all known antibiotics, making treatment difficult.

  2. Death from sepsis has decreased over the past 40 years, due to improvements in diagnosis, care and treatment. Escherichia coli accounts for more than 15% of U.S. sepsis cases across all ages, the study authors wrote.

  3. Researchers constructed three predictive models of sepsis incidence and mortality upon the emergence of a hypothetical strain of pan-resistant E. coli, categorized as most conservative, moderately conservative and least conservative. All models spanned between 1975 and 2050.

  4. According to the study, by 2050 future sepsis incidence would increase to about 3.6 million cases per year using the most conservative model, to about 6.8 million cases per year using the moderately conservative model and to about 9.1 million cases per year using the least conservative model.

  5. All three models showed an increase in annual sepsis deaths upon the emergence of the hypothetical pan-resistant E. coli strain in 2040. The most conservative model showed an 18-fold increase in sepsis deaths, about 7,240 per year, within five years of the strain's emergence. 

Read the full study here

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