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New warnings today about overuse of antibiotics. Doctors say a bacteria that is normally harmless has grown into a serious problem. They are bacteria called C. Difficile, Latin for difficult.
Most children and many adults have it in their stomachs and it's usually no problem, unless they get too much antibiotics. Then the bacteria can be very difficult indeed, growing into a major infection and killing five to 20,000 Americans a year.
Mark Shulman, a retired professor almost died. After minor surgery doctors gave him antibiotics to prevent infection, but a few days later he developed horrible diarrhea.
Mark Shulman, Infected with C. Difficile: "This was associated with severe stomach cramps so that you didn't even feel like living, it was so, so awful."
Shulman's story is increasingly common. The antibiotics kill the normal, harmless bacteria in the gut, except for C. difficult. That bacteria is left to grow into a serious threat.
Dr. William Schaffner, Vanderbilt University: "The more antibiotics we use, the more likely it is that some people will develop this C-difficile illness, this antibiotic-associated diarrheal illness."
A CDC study found that the number of Americans diagnosed in the hospital with the infection doubled from 82,000 in 1996 to 178,000 in 2003, and some estimates put the total number of infections close to 3 million a year
Robert Bazell, NBC News: "C-Difficile is just one more example of the dangers that can come with overuse of antibiotics. Dozens of bacteria are developing resistance to antibiotics and many public health experts see antibiotic overuse as one of America's major public health problems."
Doctors and the public, they say, have to learn to use fewer antibiotics
