Antibiotics are becoming less effective, and their overuse is making them

dangerous
Health & Science | July 28, 2014

By Consumer Reports

The drugs we have relied on for 70 years to fight everything from infected cuts to potentially
deadly pneumonia are becoming powerless. Why? Because antibiotics are often misused by
doctors, patients and even people raising animals for meat. And that misuse, which includes
prescribing or using those drugs incorrectly, breeds dangerous, antibiotic-resistant bacteria
that can’t be easily controlled.

Too much of a good thing

Often when we’re sick, we ask our doctors for antibiotics to treat problems that the drugs
simply don’t work against, such as colds or the flu. Those illnesses are usually caused by
viruses, not bacteria — and antibiotics don’t work against viruses.

Doctors know that the drugs don’t work for viral infections. But they’re often all too willing to
comply. That’s partly because they want to make their patients happy and partly because
doing so is faster than ordering tests to confirm the cause.

The problem isn’t limited to doctors’ offices. Many of us use antibacterial cleaning products in
our homes. “They contain different antibiotics,” says Urvashi Rangan, director of the Safety
and Sustainability Group for Consumer Reports. “These products may promote resistance, and
plain soap and water is enough to get most cleaning jobs done.”

Farms can also pose a concern: About 80 percent of the antibiotics sold in the United States
are fed to livestock to speed growth and prevent disease in healthy animals.

How resistance develops

Every time you use an antibiotic, it kills some — but not all — of the bacteria in your body. The
survivors might mutate, modifying their genetic material so that they are no longer vulnerable
to the drug.

Antibiotics also kill off some of the “good” bacteria that normally live in your intestines, which
may allow resistant bacteria to fill the void. Those bacteria can then multiply and transfer their
drug resistance to other bacteria, magnifying the problem.

The superbug threat

Superbugs are a growing worry. Antibiotic-resistant infections, such as Methicillin-resistant
Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA), sicken at least 2 million Americans each year and kill 23,000,
according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Compounding the crisis is that
drugmakers are spending less time and money creating new antibiotics even as more bacteria
are becoming resistant to the older drugs.

Alarmed by the situation, health leaders are working to change how we use antibiotics. But
experts say those efforts won’t be successful unless patients participate by, for example,
avoiding antibiotics when they aren’t necessary and taking steps to reduce their use at home.