For the first time, physicians and medical researchers around the world can use the Internet to track trends in bacterial resistance to utilization trends of prescription antibiotics. The new website, located at http://resistanceweb.mfhs.edu, was introduced this week at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in Philadelphia.

The Resistance Web ™, developed by The Clinical Pharmacokinetics Laboratory (CPL) at the Millard Fillmore Hospital in Buffalo, NY, offers health care professionals and medical researchers immediate access to the results of 10 years of drug resistance tracking and associated drug utilization data and demographic information. The site will help to alert medical professionals to drug resistance patterns and the dangers of over-prescribing antibiotics, and to encourage increased focused surveillance activities.

Scientists have warned for years that improper drug usage will impact the levels of bacterial resistance in the community. Analyzing bacterial resistance trends with antibiotic utilization may be the key to a better understanding of how clinicians can modify prescribing habits to slow the increase in resistance to commonly prescribed antibiotics, say the developers of the site.

The site houses a powerful database enabling the user to construct customized queries on susceptibility patterns of different bacteria to specific antibiotics, regionally and nationally. The database is accessible to health care professionals, including infection control professionals, infectious disease specialists, pharmacists and medical researchers.

1st appeared 2/19/98

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