Antibacterial resistance a cause for major concern

Professor Stuart Elborn, an international authority on respiratory medicine, said that more funding and further research are required into antibiotic resistance in order to improve patient outcomes for people with Cystic Fibrosis.

In his paper, Infections in chronic lung diseases 2, which was recently published in The Lancet, Professor Elborn reviews current research into infections in chronic lung diseases. Professor Elborn and his colleagues state that while not all resistance found in bacteria is caused by antibiotics, the increasing resistance to antibiotics is proving a major problem in treating people with Cystic Fibrosis.

Professor Elborn stated: “We need more research into how to improve cystic fibrosis patient outcomes while reducing antibiotic resistance. We need to look at the use of compounds that may work against bacteria in a way that helps our current antibiotics to be more effective. Such compounds are readily available for treatment of other conditions. At Queen's we are leading the way and are working on developing some of these compounds.”

For further details see:

Laura J Sherrard, Michael M Tunney, J Stuart Elborn. Antimicrobial resistance in the respiratory microbiota of people with cystic fibrosis. The Lancet, 2014; 384 (9944): 703 DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(14)61137-5

Posted by Tim Sandle