News & Perspective

(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 study from Taiwan shows a rapid increase in fluoroquinolone resistance in Salmonella enterica serotype choleraesuis in humans over the past 2 years and suggests that the resistant strain spread from pigs. The findings prompted the researchers to urge a ban on fluoroquinoline use in food animals.

(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.

(CIDRAP News) – Macrolide antibiotics, the mainstay of treatment for community-acquired pneumonia, are encountering increasing resistance from Streptococcus pneumoniae, the most common cause of the disease, according to a report in the Oct 17 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

(CIDRAP News) – Researchers from the University of Maryland School of Medicine have reported laboratory evidence of Plasmodium falciparum cross-resistance between trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, one of the standard treatments for HIV patients in Africa, and sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine, the first-line antimalarial drug in parts of Africa.