Hospitals overprescribing stronger antibiotics, CDC researchers say, as HHS moves to fight drug resistance

Hospitals and doctors are prescribing stronger, broad-spectrum antibiotics, according a new report by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention physicians published in the Journal of the American Medical Association that calls the trend "worrying" as antibiotic resistance continues to grow.

The study found that, from 2006 to 2012, antibiotic use remained about the same in hospitals. But what did change were the actual antibiotics being used, according to the study's authors. Use of penicillin and cephalosporins declined, but the use of other drugs increased, including carbapenems, which are usually given to patients showing high resistance to a number of other antibiotic medications. Use of the powerful antibiotic vancomycin also increased.

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The use of carbapenems shot up by 37 percent over the study period, while vancomycin use rose 27 percent.

A group of antibiotics known as fluoroquinolones saw a 20 percent drop in use. The report said that may be due to increasing resistance to this class of drugs. A recent CDC report found that fluoroquinolone resistance in gonorrhea patients was hovering around 20 percent, compared to almost zero percent at the turn of the century.

Sylvia Burwell, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said in a recent blog post that at least 2 million people become infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria, with 23,000 dying as a result.

[Also: Most hospitals fall short in following best practices for antibiotics use, study finds]

Burwell cited the five-year National Action Plan for Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria, or CARB, which is meant to tackle the issue. The CARB Task Force, which includes the Departments of Defense and Agriculture, has been working to implement the National Action Plan for over a year now, said Burwell. In that time, CARB launched the Antimicrobial Resistance Diagnostic Challenge, a $20 million competition to develop new diagnostic tests that healthcare providers can use to identify antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and distinguish between viral and bacterial infections.

CARB also has partnered with pharmaceutical companies and researchers to speed the development of new drugs, said Burwell.

The JAMA authors worry that doctors may be prescribing more power antibiotics "just to be safe" when they're not certain if a bacterial infection is making a patient ill and instead suggested that physicians prescribe those only when necessary.

Twitter: @JELagasse