No ESKAPE! New drugs against MRSA, other superbugs sti...( Arlington VAInfectious disease exper...),Health

Arlington, VAInfectious disease experts warn that new drugs are urgently needed to treat six drug-resistant bacteria that cause most hospital infections and increasingly escape the effects of antibiotics.

The ESKAPE pathogensas these six bad bugs have been dubbedare still on the loose more than four years after the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) first drew attention to the growing shortage of effective antibiotics. As the crisis of antibiotic resistance continues to grow, the latest IDSA "Bad Bugs, No Drugs" report examines the trickle of new antibiotics in the research and development (R&D) pipeline and proposes steps to tackle the shortage.

"The six bad bugs we call the ESKAPE bacteriaEnterococcus faecium, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella species, Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Enterobacter speciesare among the biggest threats infectious diseases physicians face today," said Helen Boucher, MD, of Tufts Medical Center in Boston, lead author of the new report, published in the January 1 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases and now available online. "We desperately need new drugs to fight them. But we also need cooperation among industry, academia, and government to create a sustainable R&D infrastructure that will fill the pipeline to meet today's needs and keep it filled with drugs that tackle tomorrow's infectious diseases threats."

Amid the continuing downward trend in new antibiotics, the new report shows a few signs of hope. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a small number of new antibiotics in the last several years, most of them active against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). However, just one can be taken orally (the rest are intravenous); they are too toxic for some patients to handle; and resistance to them is already beginning to emerge.

But the medicine cabinet is particularly bar
'/>"/>