25 Sept 2023 • A recent study by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has found that the abuse of antimicrobials has led to widespread resistance to drugs such as antibiotics in India. The study, released on Friday, found that abuse of antimicrobials - be they antibiotics, antivirals or antifungals - had led to widespread resistance to these drugs in the community. ICMR gathered data from 21 tertiary-level hospitals across the country, between January 1 and December 31, 2022.

Around 1 lakh culture isolates from ICU patients were studied to analyse hospital-acquired infections, finding 1,747 pathogens, bacterium Ecoli being the most common culprit followed by Klebsiella pneumoniae.

• The report said that if eight out of 10 patients with a drug-resistant E-coli infection responded to carbapenem in 2017, only six responded in 2022.
• It’s worse with infections caused by drug-resistant variants of Klebsiella pneumoniae, as against six out of 10 finding the medicine helpful, only four could be helped by it in 2022.

“Antibiotic prescription should be taken more seriously by doctors and should only be prescribed if needed" stressed Dr Kamini Walia, one of the main authors of the study & senior ICM scientist.

Source: TOI | Read full story