Some days, Dr. Amesh Adalja finds himself in the 1930s.
That happens when a patient is infected with bacteria immune to antibiotics, the miracle drugs that transformed medical care more than 70 years ago.
“This infection is eventually going to consume you, and there isn’t anything left on the shelf to try,” Adalja, an associate at UPMC’s Center for Biosecurity, tells the person.
Overuse and misuse of antibiotics are pushing the world toward what Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Tom Frieden calls “a post-antibiotic era.” At least 2 million people in the United States contract antibiotic-resistant infections each year, 23,000 of whom die, the CDC estimates.
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