‘The silent pandemic’ — AMR: The financial element of creating new antibiotics

The United States and the world will need new antimicrobial drugs to fight infections. There is legislation that could help this situation, because not having antibiotics to treat infections has real-world effects on patients. Jason G. Newland, MD, MEd, division chief of infectious diseases for Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, continues his discussion about incentives, or lack of them, for drug companies to research new antimicrobials.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

A continuation of discussion about the development of new drugs that would counteract antimicrobial resistance:

Jason G. Newland, MD, MEd: And there are different legislative efforts. So IDSA, the Infectious Disease Society of America, has been working with Congress about the Pasteur Act to try and decouple your sales of antibiotics with the actual company's, ability to have financial stability. This hasn't passed Congress at this time. I think it's been introduced a couple of times, I know it was introduced in the previous Congress. So we need to think about models. We all should know we are going to need new antimicrobials. We will need the development of maybe new strategies for these treatments, because I've had my own cases where I didn't have an oral antibiotic to treat an infection that's common. Therefore that child is in the hospital with an IV and then maybe a bigger IV, and was with her family in the hospital, not her home, maybe not going to the swimming pool in the summertime. I mean, these sorts of things impact lives tremendously. Therefore we will need newer drugs, and that's just talking about maybe some infections that aren't severe. When you're talking very severe ICU level care, the adults are seeing this already, right? They might not have an antibiotic to treat an infection. And it's sad to think, as a kiddo who grew up with a dad as a family practice doc in small-town Oklahoma, he would never have believed that we might be at a day where we don't have an antibiotic to treat an infection, and frankly, we are already there.