MRSA in US hospitals

Arlington Medical Resources (AMR), a pharmaceutical market research firm, found that the number of patients treated with an antibiotic associated with MRSA-infections within U.S. acute care hospitals has increased 8 percent by the last year. But the average time MRSA-patients had to stay in hospital decreased by 10 percent.

The abscess was caused by MRSA bacteria.

The newly released edition of The U.S. Hospital Antibiotic Market Guide finds that the most common infections among these patients with a positive culture for MRSA are:

Skin/skin structure infections (46 percent of patients)
Systemic infections (19 percent of patients)
Lower respiratory infections (19 percent of patients)

The U.S. Hospital Antibiotic Market Guide allows pharmaceutical companies to quantify the clinical utilization of hospital antibiotics at a highly granular level in the United States. It is the most comprehensive data available to gain insights into clinical usage and prescriber dynamics of hospital antibiotics, including gram positive and gram negative agents.

"With a large pipeline of late-stage anti-MRSA products, biopharmaceutical companies are demanding accurate information on MRSA usage patterns and trends so they can understand the current market and how treatments will evolve with the launch of new anti-MRSA drugs," said Joyce Wedemeyer, product director at AMR. "The U.S. Hospital Antibiotic Market Guide allows marketing, new product planning, market research and marketing teams to understand how antibiotic products are used in terms of combination therapy, types of infections, treatment intent and setting, and the types of specialists who are prescribing."

The U.S. Hospital Antibiotic Market Guide is a semiannual syndicated clinical audit of antibacterial use in U.S. acute care hospitals. The audit is based on antibacterial census data from 250 demographically representative hospitals, plus a detailed clinical review of 11,000 randomly selected inpatient records yielding 25,000 antibiotic drug courses each 6-month audit cycle. The Hospital Antibiotic Market Guide is also available for France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom.

_{Photo: CDC/ Bruno Coignard, M.D.; Jeff Hageman, M.H.S.}

01.07.2008