Antibiotic Resistance

At 21, Amanda Marie May's biggest dilemma was whether to pursue a career on stage or screen. Then, last year, the actress-singer-dancer got a sore throat -- inconvenient, but no crisis to the otherwise healthy Amanda.

Her acting classmates and family were shocked when she was hospitalized days later. Fusobacterium -- germs that normally live harmlessly in the mouth and intestines -- had invaded her bloodstream, causing her lungs to collapse and, soon afterward, a heart attack.

Doctors inserted a breathing tube, which allowed Pseudomonas bacteria to infiltrate her lungs. (Pseudomonas can cause hospital-acquired infections, with victims including individuals on respirators or with indwelling catheters, burn patients, and immunocompromised people.) The super-bug resisted all antibiotics in the hospital's arsenal.

Amanda died.

In the late 1940s, people believed science had struck a blow against infectious diseases. Antibiotics were vanquishing tuberculosis and other life-threatening bacterial diseases. But in the 1950s, penicillin began to lose its power to cure infections caused by Staphylococcus aureus, a common bacteria found on the skin that can cause a range of problems including stitch abscesses, pneumonia, meningitis, endocarditis, and sepsis. By the early 1990s, health experts no longer believed that infectious diseases were declining.

Today, drug-resistant bacteria account for three of five hospital-acquired infections, affecting nearly 2 million Americans. Preferred antibiotic drugs used for years are now outgunned by certain strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Enterococcus, Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas, and Acinetobacter (linked with hospital-acquired infections, such as pneumonia, meningitis, and skin and wound infections).

It's a worldwide problem: Three of the most common antimalarial drugs are useless in Thailand and parts of Cambodia.

Germs can reproduce every half-hour. "When you hit bacteria with antibiotics, particularly at low doses, their response often is not to die but to become resistant," says Jerome Schentag, Pharm.D., pharmacy professor at State University of New York at Buffalo. "One resistance leads to another."

Scientists have stepped up development of new antibiotics. But it takes at least 10 years, and hundreds of millions of dollars, to create a new antibiotic. Two new ones (Synercid and Zyvox) debuted in the past year; however, no others are on the near horizon.

As a side note, it's important to keep in mind that most germs are not foes. They digest food, process vitamins, and protect us from bacteria that cause disease, explains Stuart Levy, M.D., director of the Center for Adaptation Genetics and Drug Resistance at Tufts University in Boston. "We should think of microbes as friends, with a few backstabbers in the bunch."