New antibiotics underprescribed for hard-to-treat infections

Although several new antibiotics for combating hard-to-treat bacteria were approved during a recent five-year period, hospital doctors instead gave older, generic remedies to more than 40% of patients battling those stubborn pathogens, according to a study partially funded by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

One-third of the hospitals where data was collected never used any of the new antibiotics. Those hospitals tended to be smaller institutions located in rural areas or in urban settings where there was a lower rate of antibiotic resistance.

The study cited FDA approval of seven next-generation gram-negative antibiotics between 2014 and 2019.

Read more: Annals of Internal Medicine

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