Combating Antimicrobial Resistance and Protecting the Miracle of Modern Medicine


Book Description

The National Strategy for Combating Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria, published in 2014, sets out a plan for government work to mitigate the emergence and spread of resistant bacteria. Direction on the implementation of this strategy is provided in five-year national action plans, the first covering 2015 to 2020, and the second covering 2020 to 2025. Combating Antimicrobial Resistance and Protecting the Miracle of Modern Medicine evaluates progress made against the national strategy. This report discusses ways to improve detection of resistant infections and estimate the risk to human health from environmental sources of resistance. In addition, the report considers the effect of agricultural practices on human and animal health and animal welfare and ways these practices could be improved, and advises on key drugs and diseases for which animal-specific test breakpoints are needed.




Improving Food Safety Through a One Health Approach


Book Description

Globalization of the food supply has created conditions favorable for the emergence, reemergence, and spread of food-borne pathogens-compounding the challenge of anticipating, detecting, and effectively responding to food-borne threats to health. In the United States, food-borne agents affect 1 out of 6 individuals and cause approximately 48 million illnesses, 128,000 hospitalizations, and 3,000 deaths each year. This figure likely represents just the tip of the iceberg, because it fails to account for the broad array of food-borne illnesses or for their wide-ranging repercussions for consumers, government, and the food industry-both domestically and internationally. A One Health approach to food safety may hold the promise of harnessing and integrating the expertise and resources from across the spectrum of multiple health domains including the human and veterinary medical and plant pathology communities with those of the wildlife and aquatic health and ecology communities. The IOM's Forum on Microbial Threats hosted a public workshop on December 13 and 14, 2011 that examined issues critical to the protection of the nation's food supply. The workshop explored existing knowledge and unanswered questions on the nature and extent of food-borne threats to health. Participants discussed the globalization of the U.S. food supply and the burden of illness associated with foodborne threats to health; considered the spectrum of food-borne threats as well as illustrative case studies; reviewed existing research, policies, and practices to prevent and mitigate foodborne threats; and, identified opportunities to reduce future threats to the nation's food supply through the use of a "One Health" approach to food safety. Improving Food Safety Through a One Health Approach: Workshop Summary covers the events of the workshop and explains the recommendations for future related workshops.




Contemporary Diagnosis and Management of Antimicrobial-resistant Bacteria


Book Description

The use and overuse of antimicrobials over the past decades has led to the development of antibiotic-resistant pathogens. Now in its second edition, this handbook features chapters dedicated to the discussion of specific pathogens, including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE), and their clinical presentation and treatment. General precautions to prevent the development of drug-resistant infections are also discussed.




Mechanisms of antibiotic resistance


Book Description

Antibiotics represent one of the most successful forms of therapy in medicine. But the efficiency of antibiotics is compromised by the growing number of antibiotic-resistant pathogens. Antibiotic resistance, which is implicated in elevated morbidity and mortality rates as well as in the increased treatment costs, is considered to be one of the major global public health threats (www.who.int/drugresistance/en/) and the magnitude of the problem recently prompted a number of international and national bodies to take actions to protect the public (http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/health_consumer/docs/road-map-amr_en.pdf: http://www.who.int/drugresistance/amr_global_action_plan/en/; http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/carb_national_strategy.pdf). Understanding the mechanisms by which bacteria successfully defend themselves against the antibiotic assault represent the main theme of this eBook published as a Research Topic in Frontiers in Microbiology, section of Antimicrobials, Resistance, and Chemotherapy. The articles in the eBook update the reader on various aspects and mechanisms of antibiotic resistance. A better understanding of these mechanisms should facilitate the development of means to potentiate the efficacy and increase the lifespan of antibiotics while minimizing the emergence of antibiotic resistance among pathogens.




Antimicrobial Resistance


Book Description

Summary report published as technical document with reference number: WHO/HSE/PED/AIP/2014.2.




Treating Infectious Diseases in a Microbial World


Book Description

Humans coexist with millions of harmless microorganisms, but emerging diseases, resistance to antibiotics, and the threat of bioterrorism are forcing scientists to look for new ways to confront the microbes that do pose a danger. This report identifies innovative approaches to the development of antimicrobial drugs and vaccines based on a greater understanding of how the human immune system interacts with both good and bad microbes. The report concludes that the development of a single superdrug to fight all infectious agents is unrealistic.




Combination Therapy Against Multidrug Resistance


Book Description

Combination Therapy against Multidrug Resistance explores the potential of combination therapy as an efficient strategy to combat multi-drug resistance. Multidrug resistance (MDR) occurs when microorganisms such as bacteria, fungi, viruses, and parasites are excessively exposed to antimicrobial drugs such as antibiotics, antifungals, or antivirals, and in response the microorganism undergoes mutations or develops different resistance mechanisms to combat the drug for its survival. MDR is becoming an increasingly serious problem in both developed and developing nations. Bacterial resistance to antibiotics has developed faster than the production of new antibiotics, making bacterial infections increasingly difficult to treat, and the same is true for a variety of other diseases. Combination therapy proves to be a promising strategy as it offers potential benefits such as a broad spectrum of efficacy, greater potency than the drugs used in monotherapy, improved safety and tolerability, and reduction in the number of resistant organisms. This book considers how combination therapy can be applied in multiple situations, including cancer, HIV, tuberculosis, fungal infections, and more. Combination Therapy Against Multidrug Resistance gathers the most relevant information on the prospects of combination therapy as a strategy to combat multridrug resistance and helping to motivate the industrial sector and government agencies to invest more in research and development of this strategy as a weapon to tackle the multidrug resistance problem. It will be useful to academics and researchers involved in the development of new antimicrobial or antiinfective agents and treatment strtategies to combat multidrug resistance. Clinicians and medical nurses working in the field of infection prevention and control (IPC) will also find the book relevant - Explores strategic methods with investigation of both short- and long-term goals to combat multidrug resistance - Presents a broad scope to understand fully the ways to apply combined therapy to multidrug resistance - Provides an overview of combination therapy, but also includes specific cases such as cancer, tuberculosis, HIV and malaria




Antimicrobial Resistance in Developing Countries


Book Description

Avoiding infection has always been expensive. Some human populations escaped tropical infections by migrating into cold climates but then had to procure fuel, warm clothing, durable housing, and crops from a short growing season. Waterborne infections were averted by owning your own well or supporting a community reservoir. Everyone got vaccines in rich countries, while people in others got them later if at all. Antimicrobial agents seemed at first to be an exception. They did not need to be delivered through a cold chain and to everyone, as vaccines did. They had to be given only to infected patients and often then as relatively cheap injectables or pills off a shelf for only a few days to get astonishing cures. Antimicrobials not only were better than most other innovations but also reached more of the world’s people sooner. The problem appeared later. After each new antimicrobial became widely used, genes expressing resistance to it began to emerge and spread through bacterial populations. Patients infected with bacteria expressing such resistance genes then failed treatment and remained infected or died. Growing resistance to antimicrobial agents began to take away more and more of the cures that the agents had brought.




Antiviral Drug Resistance


Book Description

The study of antiviral drug resistance has provided important insights into the structure of virus enzymes, the functions of certain genes, mechanisms of action of antiviral drugs, the design of new antiviral compounds and the pathogenesis of viral diseases. The emergence of resistant strains must be explored at all stages of drug development: during the preclinical evaluation of candidate compounds; during the early clinical evaluation of new drugs; and as part of epidemiological surveillance for the prevalence of resistance during use of approved treatments. Accumulating understanding of antiviral drug resistance thus reflects progress in the chemotherapy of viral infection. Antiviral Drug Resistance provides state-of-the-art coverage of the basic and clinical aspects of this subject. It deals with the basic science, including the mechanisms of drug resistance and drug action, genetics of drug resistance, cross resistance, and X-ray crystallographic structural aspects of resistance, as well as the clinical aspects, including issues of assay of susceptibility of clinical isolates, descriptive aspects of emergence of reduced susceptibility, and clinical significance and impact of resistance. As such this unique volume will be essential to basic researchers in drug discovery and viral pathogenesis, as well as clinicians involved in antiviral chemotherapy.




Ethics and Drug Resistance: Collective Responsibility for Global Public Health


Book Description

This Open Access volume provides in-depth analysis of the wide range of ethical issues associated with drug-resistant infectious diseases. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is widely recognized to be one of the greatest threats to global public health in coming decades; and it has thus become a major topic of discussion among leading bioethicists and scholars from related disciplines including economics, epidemiology, law, and political theory. Topics covered in this volume include responsible use of antimicrobials; control of multi-resistant hospital-acquired infections; privacy and data collection; antibiotic use in childhood and at the end of life; agricultural and veterinary sources of resistance; resistant HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria; mandatory treatment; and trade-offs between current and future generations. As the first book focused on ethical issues associated with drug resistance, it makes a timely contribution to debates regarding practice and policy that are of crucial importance to global public health in the 21st century.