Johns Hopkins begins aggressive screening for 'superbugs' i...( the problem of antibiotic resistance b...),Health

the problem of antibiotic resistance because their bodies are not fully developed to fight off illness and because fewer drugs are FDA approved for use in children," says Aaron Milstone, M.D., a pediatric infectious diseases research fellow at Hopkins who led the study.

Vancomycin (Vancocin) is currently the only FDA-approved drug for MRSA in children, and only one drug, linezolid (Zyvox), is approved in pediatrics for VRE.

Milstone says children admitted to Hopkins are increasingly identified as harboring MRSA or VRE, with recent reports from the intensive care unit showing four times as many children with MRSA and twice as many with VRE than five years ago. These reports and others led the Hopkins team to conduct the study. In 2006, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (now known only as the Joint Commission) estimated that 70 percent of the bacteria that cause infections for 2 million hospitalized Americans each year are resistant to at least one of the drugs most commonly used to treat them.

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Contact: David March
dmarch1@jhmi.edu
410-955-1534
Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions
16-Apr-2007

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