The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that >2 million people in the United States become ill every year due to antibiotic-resistant infections, and at least 23 000 die as a result.1 In India, newborn infants develop bacterial infections that are resistant to most known antibiotics; such infections led to the deaths of 58 000 infants in 2013.2 These problems seem distant to your typical NICU here in the United States. However, in this month’s issue of Pediatrics, Schulman et al3 demonstrate that there is fertile ground for the United States to also experience such a disaster.
Our understanding of the negative effects of antibiotic exposure is expanding. New techniques for studying the human microbiome, as well as traditional epidemiologic studies, raise concerns about the negative effects antibiotics may have by altering healthy bacterial colonization.4 Connections have been made between antibiotic exposure and risk...
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