Mumbai: More than 50% of ICU patients against pneumonia caused by Klebsiella pneumoniae bacteria will not respond to the strong antibiotics called carbapenem.
Other antibiotics, iMipenem, will not affect the form of mutated Ecoli in three out of 10 cases.
These are some of the findings of the latest Report of Indian Medical Research on ‘antimicrobial resistance research and supervision’ conducted between January and December 2020, which underlined antimicrobial resistance that grew throughout India.
Mutations in microbes, be bacteria, viruses or fungi, are rendering drugs that are useless when the most patient needs it; Experts say this has been brought by the excessive decade and misuse of antibiotics, antifungal and antivirus.
As a Covid pandemic dominates 2020, ICMR data collection is also beaten; Only 65,000 cultural reports can be collected from 30 tertiary care hospitals throughout India by opposing 1 lakh samples collected in 2019.
Most hospitals are closed for non-covid patients and only those who are seriously ill to the hospital during Covid.
“ICMR has issued a complete AMR report for the fourth time, and while some microbes become more resistant and others become more vulnerable (for care), the overall picture remains the same,” said Senior ICMR scientist Dr.
Kamini Walia, who has led the AMR project.
Because Covid-19, the use of antibiotics is increasing and scientists are worried that resistance will definitely increase in the near future.
Dr.
Rahul Pandit, who heads the ICU at Fortis Hospital, Mulund, said that Carbapenem’s resistance was proven in almost 50% of patients.
“When we see the resistance of Carbapenem, we give the last resort patient of antibiotics, Colistin.
We have run out of choices left with us to care for patients,” said Dr.
Pandit, who was not related to the ICMR project.
While Colistin works in many cases, there have been a lost resistance case reported.
The ICMR 2020 report said five organisms raised great concerns: Escherichia coli (or Ecoli) was found in almost four samples, followed by Pneumoniae Klebsiella (18%), Pseudomonas Aeruginosa (12%), Acinetobacter Baumannii (10.4%) and Staphylococcus aureus ( 9.6%).
“The trend and AMR pattern are worried.
The Covid situation only made the situation worse,” said Dr.
Walia.
In the 2020 report, the Ecoli track showed irregularities: Ecoli’s vulnerability to iMipenem antibiotics which had increased from 86% in 2016 to 63% in 2019 showed a slight recovery to 72% by 2020.
However, Klebsiella pneumoniae fell from 65% in 2016 to 46% in 2019 and remained at 45% in 2020.
Acinetobacter Baumannii, which caused a relatively simple infection to be treated, has emerged as a concern in recent years, contributing almost one tenth of the sample in 2020.
Dr.
Pandit said the need for hours was for Hold an antimicrobial service program that will put strict rules on the use of these drugs.
“But such a program only works in hospital settings.
In India anyone can prescribe and sell antibiotics, which lead to large-scale abuse and resistance,” he said.