Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/1173622
39 ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANCE & STEWARDSHIP Viewpoint: Antibiotic resistance should not make us feel helpless By Anne-Marie Kommers T he healthcare community can combat antibiotic resis- tance through "a sustained, coordinated, multifront cam- paign" despite legitimate fears about the looming crisis, wrote Michelle A. Williams, ScD, dean of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, in an op-ed for The Washington Post. Four of Dr. Williams' suggested strategies: 1. Curb antibiotic use as much as possible by preventing infections, prescribing only when necessary, ending the unnecessary use of antibiotics in farm animals and increasing funding for hospital infection-control programs. 2. Invest more money in research and development. An an- tibiotic can take 10 to 15 years to go on the market and cost over $1 billion, which slows development. Dr. Williams cites new financial incentives like CARB-X, a global partnership of philanthropic organizations and governments that offers 70 percent funding for projects it selects. 3. Break the typical link between sales and profits once antibiotics come to market. Profitability should be tied to social value, not sales, Dr. Williams wrote. Some experts have proposed forming a for-profit company with governments and charities as the core investors, with the rest owned by the public. 4. Change the way we think about antibiotics. Dr. Williams wrote we must see antibiotics as precious resources, like rivers and forests, or public goods, like highways and bridges. n Hospitals often delay use of new antibiotics, study finds By Mackenzie Bean M any hospitals wait more than a year to prescribe new antibiotics, which could discourage drugmakers from pursuing further antibiotic development, according to a study published in Diagnostic Microbiology and Infectious Disease. For the study, researchers from the University of Wisconsin in Madison analyzed 2014-18 data from a clinical administration database. Researchers looked at when 132 hospitals first started using one of six new antimicrobials designated as qualified infectious disease products by the FDA, according to CIDRAP News. The FDA rolled out the QIDP designation in 2012 to help spur new antibiotic development. Products with this designation receive five extra years of marketing exclusivity. Researchers found some hospitals used a new anti- microbial within two weeks, while others waited more than four years. The average time before adoption among all hospitals was 398 days. Researchers noted this delay in clinical use could hinder drugmakers' ability to stay in the antimicrobial market, since they're not seeing a significant return on investment. This challenge could hinder the amount of new antibiotics coming to market, which is crucial to help combat antibiotic resistance. n Overusing antibiotics in pneumonia patients doesn't lower adverse outcomes, study finds By Anuja Vaidya A 43-hospital study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine found nearly 68 percent of pneumonia patients received excess antibiotic therapy and those extra treatments failed to lower adverse outcomes. Researchers examined data from hospitals in the Michigan Hospital Medicine Safety Consortium. ey studied 6,481 general care patients with pneumonia and calculated the rate of excess days of antibiotic treatment by subtracting the shortest effective treatment duration for each patient from the actual duration of antibiotic treatment. Researchers found that 67.8 percent of the patients received excess antibiotic therapy. Patients were more likely to receive excess antibiotic therapy if: • ey had respiratory cultures or non- culture diagnostic testing • ey had a longer stay • ey received a high-risk antibiotic in the prior 90 days • ey had community-acquired pneu- monia • ey did not have a total antibiotic treatment duration documented at discharge Excess antibiotic therapy was not linked to lower rates of any adverse outcomes, includ- ing death, readmission, emergency depart- ment visit or Clostridioides difficile infection, the study found. n