Healthy Cattle and Healthy Humans

Medical experts have long worried that the indiscriminate use of antibiotics in animal feed is yielding resistant strains of bacteria that may be ingested by humans and cause diseases that can’t be cured. The main concern has been large-scale dosing of big herds or flocks. But an application now before the Food and Drug Administration raises the issue of whether injecting even individual animals may interfere with human medical treatments.

The human version, known as cefepime, is typically administered intravenously in a hospital to treat severe pneumonia or other serious infections. Now an animal health company wants to sell a veterinary version, known as cefquinome, to treat beef cattle that are suffering from bovine respiratory disease, the most common cause of illness in cattle.

There are many other veterinary antibiotics in this class already on the market, but the F.D.A. does not have the authority to evaluate whether a new drug is needed. The F.D.A. simply evaluates the drug’s safety and effectiveness in animals and its potential impact on the effectiveness of drugs used in humans. There the evidence is murky. While an F.D.A. scientific assessment determined that the proposed new veterinary drug posed only a “medium” risk to human health — hardly a cause for alarm — an F.D.A. expert advisory committee voted 6 to 4 to reject the veterinary drug.

The agency needs to dig much harder. It needs to take another look at its judgment that the drug is only “highly important” to human medicine in light of the World Health Organization’s judgment that it is “critically important.” It also needs to determine just how much resistance to the drug has emerged in Europe, where it has been used in animals for many years. And it needs a better fix on the number of cattle apt to receive these injections, a factor affecting the likelihood that resistance will spread.

Before giving the go-ahead, the F.D.A. must make sure that this drug — of marginal importance to the cattle industry — will not undercut a drug vital to human medical care.
source:www.nytimes.com