Pneumonia Strain Becoming More Resistant to Drugs, Study Finds

Streptococcus pneumonia, a sometimes-lethal type of bacterium that causes many cases of pneumonia, bloodstream infections and other illnesses, is rapidly becoming resistant to antibiotics, a government study found. Experts have warned for a decade that overuse of antibiotics is helping germs become resistant to the drugs, raising the specter of more deaths and amputations.

Between 1995 and 1998, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention collected 12,045 samples from U.S. patients infected with S. pneumonia and tested them against various antibiotics. Over the three-year span, the percentage of pneumococcus samples resistant to three or more antibiotic classes grew from 9% to 14%, they report in today’s New England Journal of Medicine. The percentage resistant to penicillin went from 21% to 25%.

--Compiled by Times medical writer Thomas H. Maugh II