CDC report: 35,000 Americans die of antibiotic-resistant infections each year

An estimated 35,000 Americans die of antibiotic-resistant infections each year — one every 15 minutes — according to a stark new report released by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday.

Overall, nearly 3 million Americans a year contract an infection caused by an antibiotic-resistant bug, the public health agency said.

“These are happening here and now, in the United States, in large numbers. This isn’t some developing world thing, this isn’t a threat for 2050. It’s a threat for here and now,” said Dr. Cornelius “Neil” Clancy, director of the Extreme Drug Resistance Pathogen Laboratory in the University of Pittsburgh division of infection diseases, told STAT.

The report, the first update on the subject from the CDC in six years, uses better data sources — electronic patient records — than were available in 2013.

Using the new data, the CDC recalculated its estimates from 2013, increasing them sharply.

At the time, the agency estimated that 23,000 people died a year due to antibiotic-resistant infections. Officials said Wednesday that the toll at the time was actually 44,000.

On a more positive note, however, the CDC found that some progress has been made to curb the toll of antibiotic resistance, through campaigns to promote more responsible use of antibiotics and antibiotic stewardship efforts in hospitals. As a result, the current estimate of 35,000 deaths actually represented an 18% decline from what officials now believe to be the toll in 2013.

Meanwhile, some bacteria were reclassified downward in the report’s hierarchy of urgent, serious, and concerning threats.

The report “shows us that our collective efforts to stop the spread of germs and preventing infections is saving lives,” said CDC Director Robert Redfield. “Today’s report demonstrates notable progress, yet the threat is still real. Each of us has an important role in combating it.”

The most critical threats include a new addition — Candida auris, or C. auris, a fungal infection that is resistant to many of the available antifungal drugs. Its addition effectively illustrates the complexity of the problems posed by the fast-evolving field of drug resistance, said Michael Craig, CDC’s senior adviser for antibiotic resistance coordination and strategy.

“It’s a pathogen we didn’t even know about when we put out the last report in 2013. And since then it has circumnavigated the globe and caused a lot of infections and deaths as it has spread,” Craig said.

Other pathogens on the urgent list include drug-resistant gonorrhea and carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae, a class of bacteria resistant to the important carbapenem antibiotics. These include bacteria that cause common urinary tract infections, which in some cases now require courses of intravenous antibiotics to treat.

CDC report: 35,000 Americans die of antibiotic-resistant infections each year