Antibiotic resistance levels shift among ocular pathogens in 2014 ARMOR data

 

Take-home message: New surveillance data on antibiotic resistance among ocular pathogens shows worrisome trends for some widely used drugs while resistance rates for some isolates were relatively stable.

 

By Nancy Groves; Reviewed by Penny A. Asbell, MD

New York-An ongoing surveillance study of pathogenic ocular bacteria show high levels of resistance to commonly used antibiotics.

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The Antibiotic Resistance Monitoring in Ocular micRoorganisms (ARMOR) study data indicate that about 1 in 2 Streptococcus pneumoniae isolates were resistant to penicillin, whereas 2 in 5 were resistant to azithromycin.

Methicillin resistance remained high in Staphylococcus aureus (1 in 4). The rate was 1 in 2 among coagulase-negative staphylococci (CoNS).

Dr. Asbell“Methicillin-resistant organisms continue to be fairly commonly found in ocular isolates, whether it’s S. aureus or CoNS,” said Penny A. Asbell, MD, professor of ophthalmology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York.

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“Equally important, when resistance is found, most of those organisms are multidrug-resistant,” Dr. Asbell said. “You can’t just change from one group to another and hope you catch it. Those organisms develop mechanisms to become resistant to many of the antibiotics that we typically use.”

However, on a positive note, vancomycin continued to be effective when other antibiotics were not, Dr. Asbell added.

She reported comparisons of susceptibility rates based on 2013 data on 496 bacterial isolates collected from 22 participating sites and preliminary 2014 data on 141 isolates collected from 7 sites.

This is the sixth consecutive year that data from ARMOR, a national survey of resistance levels among ocular pathogens, has been released. Isolates of S. pneumoniae, S. aureus, CoNS, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Haemophilus influenzae were tested.

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“What we discovered is that some things are continuing to be issues and that some things appear to be changing a little bit,” Dr. Asbell said. “There continues to be resistance. Specifically, S. pneumoniae continues to be resistant to penicillin.”

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