A healthy immune system may be all the protection someone needs to overcome a bacterial infection, but once one disease takes hold, it may beget more illnesses. Such is often the case with Clostridium difficile, a potentially deadly bacterium that can flourish in the wake of other infections. Senior citizens, such as Alice Brennan, are particularly vulnerable and serve as a reminder that new and powerful antibiotics are needed as protection from dangerous bacterial threats.
Alice Brennan was a sharp and mobile 88-year-old woman who lived independently in a two-story home in western New York. In late July 2009, however, Mrs. Brennan felt ill and went to the emergency room. Upon examination, doctors detected methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in her urinary tract. Also known as MRSA, this multidrug-resistant “superbug” is responsible for an estimated 19,000 deaths and 360,000 hospitalizations each year.1 Because MRSA is more difficult to combat than conventional infections, doctors treated Mrs. Brennan with multiple antibiotics.
Even under such aggressive treatment, her condition worsened, and doctors suspected their patient might be fighting more than just MRSA. Tests confirmed their hunch; she had contracted a C. difficile infection, another disease with few treatment options.
C. difficile resides in the intestines of up to 3 percent of healthy adults without causing any symptoms. That can change if a patient takes antibiotics to treat another infection because those drugs may suppress the normal intestinal bacteria that keep C. difficile in check. When circumstances allow C. difficile to flourish, toxins that cause severe diarrhea and inflammation of the colon are released.2 C. difficile-associated infections claimed the lives of nearly 45,000 Americans over an 11-year period, climbing from 793 deaths in 1999 to 7,285 in 2009.3
On August 22, after enduring four ineffective courses of antibiotic treatments, Mrs. Brennan was transferred to a hospice, where she died from complications related to her infections one week later.
Says her daughter, Mary Brennan Taylor, “If there was a magic pill that would have been able to turn this around, I would have given my right arm for that.”
In May 2011, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a new antibiotic to treat infections associated with C. difficile, some strains of which had become resistant to existing treatments.4 As bacteria continue to evolve and new drug-resistant superbugs emerge, Mrs. Brennan’s story makes evident the ongoing need for new lifesaving antibiotics.
Nearly a year after the enactment of the Generating Antibiotic Incentives Now Act, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has released draft guidance for industry on developing antibacterial therapies for patients with unmet medical needs.
More infoAs multidrug-resistant infections have grown more prevalent, few new antibiotics are reaching the market. This is attributed, in part, to the economic and regulatory challenges associated with their development. Recently, stakeholders have endorsed a novel regulatory pathway to approve these lifesaving drugs for use in limited patient populations — namely those at highest risk and with few or no other options.
More info"As a nation, we need to exercise greater care with our use of antibiotics, in both humans and animals, so that these medications remain effective in treating serious bacterial infections."
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