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medpundit |
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Friday, July 26, 2002I work for a biopharmaceutical company that's developing (among other things) anti-bacterials for MRSA and VRE. My sense, from the market research we've done, is that antibacterial resistance, while really scary, is not a really big (patient numbers) problem. Nor indeed, does it look posed to become significantly bigger soon. Obviously, we aren't writing the area off as an area w/o medical need -- we're trying to develop drugs for it. But it does seem to me that the coverage of the danger in the lay press has been overblown. I see a lot more writen about vanc resistance than (say) Hep C or Hep B, and this seems odd to the point of crazy. The Tribune account you site doesn't do a lot to convince me otherwise. He’s right that we don’t see huge numbers of these resistant bacteria, but they are a growing problem and one that would best be confronted now before it does become one of greater magnitude. Right now, the problem is largely one of a few infections here and there that don’t respond to the usual antibiotics, at least in the average community practice. The numbers of, say, drug resistant meningitis cases, aren’t nearly of the magnitude of hepatitis cases, but they do seem to be emerging. Drug resistant tuberculosis, on the other hand, is a significant problem. The Tribune articles were overblown almost to the point of hysteria, but the problem of antibiotic resistance isn’t going to go away, and it would be best for us all if we addressed it now before they become the rule rather than the exception. posted by Sydney on 7/26/2002 07:35:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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