1 of 4 | Collectively called antimicrobial-resistant infections, they sicken millions annually, and more than 35,000 people in the United States die from them every year, Photo by Chokniti Khongchum/Pexels
NEW YORK, Aug. 30 (UPI) — Even as fall flu season approaches and COVID-19 cases rise nationally, the biggest contagion threat facing the United States may not be one disease but several that don’t respond to existing medications, according to experts and recent data.
Collectively called antimicrobial-resistant infections, they sicken millions annually, and more than 35,000 people in the United States die from them every year, or about the same number reported in an above-average flu season, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates.
“During the COVID-19 pandemic and since, there has been a significant increase in hospital-onset infections related to multidrug-resistant organisms, despite a lot of efforts to curb these trends,” Dr. Gabriela Andujar Vazquez, a specialist in geographic medicine and infectious diseases at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, told UPI in a phone interview.
“There is still a lack of understanding of something that is affecting all of us,” Andujar Vazquez said.
Many of these infections occur in hospitals, while others cause those infected to be hospitalized due to serious illness, according to the CDC.
In many cases, multiple rounds of drug treatment are required to identify a medication that can snuff out the infection, Andujar Vazquez said.
All of which means it’s important that people suffering from infections that don’t seem to be resolving, despite drug treatment, work with their doctors to get the care they need, she said.
“There are ways to prevent these infections from happening,” she added.
Infections in the millions
More than 2.8 million antimicrobial-resistant infections occur in the United States each year, according to the CDC.
In addition to the 35,000-plus who die from these diseases domestically, more than 1.27 million succumb to the infections globally, the agency estimates.
Several common infections, including staph, pneumonia, salmonella, sexually transmitted gonorrhea and C. diff can involve drug-resistant bacteria, the agency says.
Others that might be caused by drug-resistant bacteria are recurrent urinary tract infections, frequent skin infections or those acquired in a healthcare setting in which antibiotics are frequently used, according to Dr. Thomas Murray, a professor of pediatrics, infectious disease and global health at Yale School of Medicine.
“Antibiotic resistance is most often encountered when people receive multiple courses of antibiotics for infections,” Murray, who is also the medical director for infection prevention at Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital, told UPI in an email.
“Any infection can be caused by resistant bacteria,” he said.
The biggest driver of drug-resistant infections is the overuse, or improper use, of the medications developed to treat them, Murray said.
This is not to say that antibiotics are bad — in fact, they serve a vital purpose when used correctly to treat bacterial infections.