News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – A recent meta-analysis does not support the idea that antibiotic treatment increases the risk of hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) in patients with Escherichia coli O157:H7 enteritis, but the authors say the question isn't settled yet.

(CIDRAP News) – A committee of experts convened by the Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics (APUA) says that antibiotics should not be used in agriculture except to treat sick animals and protect healthy animals threatened by disease in the herd or flock.

(CIDRAP News) – Foodborne disease outbreaks in public schools increased about 10% per year and made 16,000 students sick in the 1990s, according to the US General Accounting Office (GAO). The agency recommends the creation of a single federal food safety agency with increased authority as one of several steps to improve food safety in the schools.

A ruling by the Food and Drug Administration on whether to stop the use of enrofloxacin in poultry because of concern about antimicrobial resistance is more than a year away, according to a hearing schedule laid out by an FDA official.

Note: This story was updated Mar 6, 2002, with the addition of information about comments from a group that opposes the proposed legislation.

(CIDRAP News) — To slow the growth of bacterial resistance to drugs, Rep. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, has introduced a bill to ban the use of eight types of antibiotics in healthy food animals and halt all use of fluoroquinolones in poultry.

(CIDRAP News) – Nearly a year and a half after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) first proposed to stop the use of enrofloxacin (Baytril, a fluoroquinolone antibiotic) in poultry because of safety concerns, the agency says it plans to hold a public hearing on the proposal. The date of the hearing will be set at a prehearing conference on April 8.

(CIDRAP News) – A recent analysis of ground pork in grocery stores in five states showed that 4% of the samples contained enterococci with high-level resistance to gentamicin, an antibiotic used to treat enterococcal infections in humans. In addition, most Enterococcus faecium isolates were resistant to quinupristin-dalfopristin (Synercid), a streptogramin antibiotic used to treat infections caused by vancomycin-resistant E faecium.