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If you’ve ever had Montezuma’s revenge from foreign travel, you know it is very unpleasant! Infection from this food-borne bacterium known as Shigella can cause severe cramping, vomiting, and watery or bloody diarrhea.
In the past we’ve controlled this disease with a course of the antibiotic Ciprofloxacin (Cipro). However, a strain of the bacterium has mutated and is now resistant to Cipro! We currently have outbreaks of this from California to Puerto Rico.
Hundreds of Americans have returned to the US from foreign travel and have been hospitalized with Shigella infection because Cipro doesn’t work against the strain. Almost half of these cases aren’t even related to foreign travel; the disease is spreading within our borders.
Yet another wake up call to our overuse of antibiotics in this country! We’ve all been hearing about “MRSA” spreading rapidly from hospital based to outside the hospital setting, infecting people and not responding to our arsenal of antibiotics.
One study I found estimated that half of antibiotic prescriptions in this country are not needed. That’s right – HALF! Since we have been throwing antibiotics at almost every cold and cough, the bacteria are getting smarter. They learn to adapt and become resistant to those drugs.
Look, our discovery of antibiotics is nothing short of a miracle for humans. Certain infections we used to be hospitalized for and even die from are rare now. Antibiotics are part of the reason our life expectancy has increased – from 63 for a U.S. citizen born in 1940 to 78 for someone born in the U.S. today.
Yet problems arise when we as patients rush to ask for them whenever we are sick, and doctors feel compelled to give patients what they want against better judgement. Then we are left with life threatening diseases that we have no cure for – like the days before antibiotics were discovered!
Remember, every illness doesn’t need an antibiotic. We need to know that if one day we DO need them, they work!
