Overuse of antibiotics blamed for outbreak
OVERUSE OF antibiotics was chiefly responsible for a serious stomach bug outbreak that spread through UK hospitals in the mid-2000s, research has shown.
Limiting antibiotic treatment rather than a deep cleaning programme introduced in 2007 eventually brought the epidemic under control, scientists believe.
The findings highlight the threat to public health posed by unrestricted use of antibiotics, which promotes bacterial drug resistance.
Severe cases of diarrhoea in hospitals caused by the bug Clostridium difficile (C. diff ) first hit the headlines in 2006. The following year, deep cleaning aimed at combating a lack of hygiene in hospitals was announced by the NHS.
But according to the new study, the C. diff problem in hospitals was only overcome when use of fluoroquinolone antibiotics, which include the common drug ciprofloxacin, was restricted and made more targeted.
Cutting back on ciprofloxacin and related antibiotics led to an 80 per cent fall in drug-resistant C. diff infections in the UK.
Meanwhile the smaller number of cases caused by C. diff bugs not resistant to fluoroquinolone antibiotics remained the same.
Co-author Professor Mark Wilcox, from the University of Leeds, said: “Our results mean that we now understand much more about what really drove the UK epidemic of C. diff infection in the mid-2000s.”