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Southeast Still Big on Antibiotic Use, New Study Shows

New research reveals an alarmingly high use of antibiotics in the Southeastern United States, a problem that may increase the rate at which these super drugs become useless.

These findings come out just as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) kicked off an annual effort to reduce overuse of antibiotics called "Get Smart: Know When Antibiotics Work." The CDC estimates that $1.1 billion a year is spent on needless antibiotic prescriptions for adult upper respiratory infections alone. These prescriptions also speed the development of resistance to important antibiotic therapies.

Overall antibiotic use has decreased by 12 percent between 1999 and 2007, based on interactive maps released by Extending the Cure. However, the maps also indicate a very high antibiotic use across the Southeast compared to states in the Pacific Northwest.

CDC officials point to residents of West Virginia and Kentucky, where antibiotic use rates are highest, who take about twice as many antibiotics per capita as people living in Oregon and Alaska. Florida falls below the national average of 858 with 847 antibiotic prescriptions per 1,000 people.

The five states with the highest antibiotic use in the nation are West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana and Alabama. However, the maps show higher than average use of antibiotics in other regions of the country as well.

Prescribing rates for fluoroquinolones, a powerful class of antibiotics, shot up by 49 percent from 1999 to 2007. At the same time, antibiotic resistance is increasing. Compared to 1999, these drugs are now seven times less likely to work against Escherichia coli, the most frequent cause of bacterial infections.

Penicillins are still the most popular antibiotics, as nearly a third of prescriptions filled in the United States are for penicillins. During this same period, the market share of these drugs has decreased by 28 percent as doctors are turning to more powerful antibiotics.

High per capita antibiotic use rates could reflect an environment in which consumers mistakenly demand antibiotics – and doctors prescribe them -- when they have a cold or the flu, which are caused by viruses and cannot be treated with these drugs. However, more research must be done to discover the driving factors behind antibiotic use.

Extending the Cure researchers suggest policymakers must address the larger problem of antibiotic resistance by developing solutions, including surveillance and better infection control and increasing efforts to curtail overuse of antibiotics. Such a solution, researchers say, would help preserve the power of the drugs left on the shelf.

For more on medical safety issues, see the library of articles by Daytona Beach medical malpractice attorney.

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