Antibiotics Expert

Cattle producers are trying to educate Congress about the use of antibiotics in the beef industry.

Michael Apley, a Kansas State University veterinary clinical pharmacologist, recently went to Washington, D.C., with National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) representatives to address the issue.

They met with Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., and Rep. Leonard Boswell, D-Iowa, to discuss H.R. 1549, Slaughter’s bill to ban the use of antibiotics in livestock.

Just a few months after winning the 2009 Nobel Prize for chemistry, Yale University’s Thomas Steitz isn’t resting on his laurels.

Yale and the New Haven company Steitz founded, Rib-X Pharmaceuticals, on Tuesday announced a discovery they say could lead to better treatment of stubborn tuberculosis cases and other drug-resistant infections.

Steitz and his colleagues, in a paper published this week in the journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, described how two components of antibiotics used to treat TB bind to the parts of the cell that form proteins. The idea is to use these structures to make new, advanced antibiotics.

A recent article in the News-Leader documented the saga of a young wrestler who developed a serious infection with a resistant Staphylococcal Aureus bacterium (MRSA). The article mentioned the usual advice about careful hand washing and good hygiene, and briefly included advice from an infectious disease specialist about not using unnecessary antibiotics and finishing those you have been prescribed. The statement then was made that there was hope there would soon be new and stronger antibiotics to combat these resistant organisms.

According to experts, up to 70% of the antibiotics in this country are going to livestock. It has raised concerns that widespread use of antibiotics on U.S. farms is making the drugs less effective for treating humans. One local school district is serving anti-biotic free meat.

The first symposium of the Annual Conference on Microbial Resistance focused on the economic and public policy aspects of antibiotic resistance and antibiotic development.

Moderator Susan Foster, PhD, of the Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics (Boston, MA) presented first, then facilitated a Q&A session with other presenters Ramanan Laxminarayan, PhD, of Resources for the Future (Washington, DC) and Kevin Outterson, JD, LLM, of Boston University School of Law (Boston, MA).

Foster’s presentation focused on the Economic Consequences of Antibiotic Resistance. She touched on the direct and indirect costs of drug resistance, including poorer patient health, burden to families, the need to find replacement drugs when current ones fail, and other topics.