The fight against illnesses that haven’t yet taken shape
There’s legislation in Congress that needs to be passed to get a handle on AMR and sepsis, which constitute public health emergencies.
I remember asking the surgeon — “I’m going to live … right?”
I am a survivor of sepsis, the body’s overwhelming and often life-threatening response to an infection. Had an antibiotic not worked against the infection in my body that was causing it to shut down, I might not be here today.
In April 2014, I was working in Manhattan and was an active rower, up at 5:30 every morning to get on the water before getting on the train. On a work trip, I began to feel sick, with fever and chills — I got through the week and thought I had the flu.
When I went to my doctor, he knew this was not the flu — a round of blood tests landed me in the ER for the next 11 hours as more testing was done. By this point I felt pain in my shoulder, and a few hours later I couldn’t move my arm.
Eventually, after many more tests, a lung X-ray, a misdiagnosis of pneumonia, and a fever that spiked as high as 105, blood cultures indicated I had a Group B Strep infection. The infection had lodged in my shoulder bone — hence the pain and lack of mobility — and had spread to my blood, which was causing a reaction of septic shock in my body. Septic shock can be a cause of tissue damage, organ failure, amputation and even death.
Since the doctors were able to identify the cause of my infection, I was immediately placed on an IV of penicillin to combat the strep bacteria. I underwent surgery for my shoulder; luckily, the infection had not progressed to the point of needing amputation. Ultimately, having source control through surgery and having targeted antibiotics helped to save my life.
Antibiotics have saved countless other lives, too — they have been a game changer for public health. But their value is at risk due to misuse and overuse, and that’s leading to a growing public health concern — AMR or antimicrobial resistance.
When antibiotics and other antimicrobials are overused, the germs they’re designed to treat evolve; eventually, these medicines may not work on a given strain of infection. And when infections get out of control, and are unresponsive to treatments, that can become very serious for patients — as was the case with my sepsis.
Sepsis is more of a health threat than most people may realize, with more than 1.7 million cases diagnosed in the U.S. each year. Of that number, 350,000 adults die of sepsis, and an additional 6,800 kids.
Sepsis is also the No. 1 cause of hospital readmissions, costing more than $3.5 billion each year.
What’s more, superbugs could account for more than 10 million deaths each year by 2050. The World Health Organization has declared AMR one of the top 10 health threats to humanity.
The public health community is trying to fight back. Right now, there’s legislation in Congress that needs to be passed to get a handle on AMR and sepsis, which constitute public health emergencies.
The PASTUER Act (Pioneering Antimicrobial Subscriptions to End Upsurging Resistance) outlines firm actions to fight back against AMR by increasing resources for antibiotic stewardship programs and establishing a subscription-style model, wherein the government would incentivize innovators to deliver a meaningful number of novel and medically important antimicrobial products to meet current and future patient needs.
Another proposed piece of legislation, Lulu’s Law (The National Sepsis Data Trust, Research, Outcomes, and Innovation Act), would create a centralized mechanism to connect clinical data — including data on antimicrobials — from sepsis patients on both the national and state levels. Good data can better inform researchers, innovators, public health officials, and the public about sepsis, the most dangerous infectious strains that can cause it, which antimicrobials are working best, and more. With better information, we’ll be better equipped to tackle these public health crises.
Passing these bills is the right thing to do, in order for our country to be better prepared to fight off illnesses we’ve yet to see evolve.