New Web site tracks antibiotic resistance
Updated peer review among available features
Dubbed the Resistance Web, http://resistanceweb.mfhs.edu features national trends in bacterial resistance and updated reviews of antibiotic prescription and utilization trends. This World Wide Web site is a collaboration by the Clinical Pharmacokinetics Laboratory (CPL) at Millard Fillmore Hospital in Buffalo, NY.
Basic information tracking resistance patterns, prescribing alerts, and surveillance done over the last 10 years have been compiled into this first-of-its-kind site, but the constant updating of benchmark studies analyzing patterns of clinical bacterial isolates by CPL will keep the site current, its administrators say. All health care workers are being encouraged to submit their own data for review and upload into the site.
"Analyzing bacterial resistance trends with antibiotic utilization may be the key to a better understanding of how we as researchers and clinicians can modify our prescribing habits to slow the increase in resistance to commonly prescribed antibiotics," says Jerome Schentag, PharmD, director of the clinical pharmacokinetics lab and a faculty member at the State University of New York at Buffalo's school of pharmacy.
The site's database is divided into two main categories, one tracking trend data updated quarterly, the other reporting spot surveillance studies that investigate various types of antibiotics vs. a defined sample of clinical bacteria isolates collected over a defined time period.
"It takes seven to 10 years to develop a new antibiotic, and bacteria need just a few months or years to develop resistance to it," Schentag says. "The medical world is faced with a significant lag between the time that surveillance studies of resistance are done and the time that the information is presented to the medical community, and we're trying to use the Web's immediacy to speed the process."
One of the more personalized features is that pharmacists noting a resistance problem at their hospitals can log into the site's trends database and input a query investigating relationships among various antibiotics, with information such as a given bacterium's historical rates of susceptibility to those antibiotics given back.
[The site does require registration. For more information, call CPL at (716) 887-4917.]
You have reached your article limit for the month. Subscribe now to access this article plus other member-only content.
- Award-winning Medical Content
- Latest Advances & Development in Medicine
- Unbiased Content