Emerging Antibiotic Resistance of Blood Stream Infections among Children

The emergence, growth and spread of bacteria with increasing antibiotic resistance is a significant health risk to children. Although antibiotics can be life-saving, its overuse leads to the development of resistance. Bacteria have developed varied mechanisms of resistance to all classes of antibiotics like (1) inactivation of the antimicrobial, (2) alteration of the site of antibiotic activity and (3) isolation of the target site from the antibiotic. Mechanisms of resistance to antimicrobials used to treat infectious disease have been known since before antibiotics were introduced into routine clinical usage.

Objective:

To review the emerging antibiotic resistance of blood stream infections among children.

Methodology:

We conducted a systematic search on Pub-Med and Googlescholar; reports from WHO and other organizations. We have used search terms as antibiotic resistance children.

Burden of antibiotic resistance in children:

Prescribing Support Unit (PSU) showed that out of the 40 million antibacterial prescriptions per year in primary care, around 12 million were for children. Children have high rates of minor infection but because of their increased susceptibility to serious bacterial infection are frequently prescribed for antibiotics. About 55% of children aged 0-5 years in the UK receive an average of 2.2 prescriptions for a β lactam antibiotic each year. Prescribing amoxicillin to a child more than triples the mean MIC (9.2 μg/ml vs 2.7 μg/ml, p=0.005). The correlation between community use of penicillin and penicillin resistance across 19 European countries has been reported as 0.84. Co-trimoxazole resistant pneumococci was recovered in 52% of children one week after malaria treatment with co-trimoxazole compared with 34% in controls.

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