Check out this great blog from Christian John Lillis, Executive Director of the Peggy Lillis Foundation posted today on the CDC's Safe Healthcare Blog:
I had scarlet fever when I was six years old. The infection had me in the hospital for a week, while the doctors struggled to diagnose my illness and then managed my treatment with antibiotics. One of my earliest memories is being shaken awake at least twice a night by a large, looming nurse to take another oral dose of antibiotics. From the mid-nineteenth century through the Second World War, scarlet fever was a significant cause of childhood death causing upwards of 60,000 deaths at the turn of the century. Though death rates were decreasing throughout the 20th century1, it was the discovery and use of antibiotics that made scarlet fever a manageable illness. Luckily for me, by the time I was diagnosed in 1979, the antibiotic penicillin was widely available. My mother took me home following my week-long stay in the hospital. Though antibiotics likely saved my life, they were also presumed to be responsible for my adult teeth coming in discolored and with overly porous enamel. Every dentist I saw, including the one who eventually helped remove some of the discoloration, blamed the huge doses of antibiotics I was given as child. Despite having otherwise straight and nicely shaped teeth, the discoloration always bothered me. The Story of Peggy Lillis The Other Side of Antibiotics Unlike a lot of Americans, I’ve rarely used antibiotics throughout my life. While in high school and college, I tended to get strep throat at least once every winter. The doctor would always prescribe antibiotics and I would never take them. Instead, being a “young invulnerable,” I felt I could fight it off myself. I would gargle with warm salt water, drink tea, and live on cherry cough drops. I was never sick for more than 10 days and by the time I was 25, the bouts of strep stopped. Thankfully, I did not have any complications from strep throat and remained healthy in my 20s and 30s. But truthfully, I rarely thought about antibiotic use. That changed with the death of my mother Peggy Lillis on April 21, 2010 from a Clostridium difficile infection. Like so many other Americans, my mother’s deadly C. diff infection began with her being prescribed a prophylactic dose of an antibiotic, clindamycin, following a root canal. Within four days, she began to experience diarrhea. Ten days after beginning her course of antibiotics, she was dead. Prior to my mother’s death, I would never have imagined that an antibiotic could precipitate a deadly disease. Like many Americans we had never heard of Clostridium difficile. Nor did we realize the system-wide effects that many antibiotics have on the body. I’ve wondered since Mom’s death if knowing how antibiotics had affected my teeth made me subconsciously reticent to take them. In our mother’s memory, my brother Liam and I founded the Peggy Lillis Foundation (PLF) to raise C. diff awareness and advocate for policy changes to combat the disease. A key element of our work is educating the public about the judicious use of antibiotics. To that end, we team up with organizations like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to share stories like our mother’s, provide the patient and caregiver perspective, and develop shared goals and strategies. Throughout this year, we’ve been working with CDC and other organizations to raise awareness of the role of antibiotics in causing C. diff infections. Examples include:
For this year’s Get Smart About Antibiotics Week, we worked with CDC on a new video about our mother’s story. The video clearly demonstrates that antibiotic use can lead to real harm, even death. I am living proof that antibiotics are incredibly important and vital drugs. At the same time, my mother would likely still be alive today if she’d never taken that course of clindamycin. Antibiotics can save lives. But antibiotics can take lives too. The difference in our two outcomes demonstrates how desperately we need to be smarter about antibiotics. 1 Smallman-Raynor, Andrew Cliff, Peter Haggett, Matthew (2004). World Atlas of Epidemic Diseases. London: Hodder Education. p. 76. ISBN 9781444114195. Check out the blog and more information here.
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Until 2000, pneumococcal infections caused 60,000 cases of invasive disease such as meningitis and pneumonia each year. An “invasive” disease means that germs invade parts of the body that are normally free from germs. When this happens, disease is usually very severe, requiring treatment in a hospital and in some cases causing death. You have probably heard of pneumonia, which is an infection of the lungs. Pneumonia can be caused by many different bacteria, viruses, and even fungi, but pneumococcus is one of the most common causes of severe pneumonia. Many bacteria, including some Streptococcus pneumoniae (pneumococcus), have become resistant to one or many antibiotics. Available data also show that up to 40% of these infections were caused by pneumococcal bacteria that were resistant to at least one antibiotic. However, with the introduction of pneumococcal conjugate vaccines for children (PCV7 and PCV13), cases of invasive pneumococcal disease dropped to approximately 34,000 in 2013, and resistance rates have reduced to 30%.
This demonstrates that PCV7 and PCV13 are preventing infections caused by drug-resistant pneumococcal strains. Not only have morbidity and mortality rates decreased, costs associated with the infection have plummeted as well. These higher costs were because of the need for more expensive antibiotics; repeat disease due to treatment failures; the need for surveillance to track resistance patterns; educational requirements for patients, physicians, and microbiologists; and new antibiotic drug development. The pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV13 or Prevnar 13®) protects against the 13 types of pneumococcal bacteria that cause most of the severe illness in children and adults. The vaccine can also help prevent some ear infections. PCV13 is recommended for all children at 2, 4, and 6 months, and again at 12-15 months old. PCV13 is also recommended for adults 19 years or older with certain medical conditions and in all adults 65 years or older. By getting vaccinated, you can help Nevada reduce its rate of pneumococcal infections, and curb the increasing rate of antibiotic resistance. For more information, visit: http://www.cdc.gov/pneumococcal/about/infection-types.html http://www.cdc.gov/pneumococcal/drug-resistance.html |
AuthorOPHIE records and analyzes data from disease investigations, identifies risk factors, and provides education on disease prevention in Nevada. Archives
November 2018
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