Sustained rise in antimicrobial resistance in India: ICMR study

New Delhi, September 10

A big chunk of patients in India may no longer benefit from carbapenem, a powerful antibiotic administered mainly in ICU settings to treat pneumonia and septicemia, as they have developed antimicrobial resistance to it, an ICMR study has found.

The data analysis done between January 1 and December 31, 2021 pointed towards a sustained increase in drug-resistant pathogens, resulting in difficulty to treat certain infections with available medicines, senior Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) scientist Dr Kamini Walia, who led the study, said.

“Antibiotic resistance has the potential of taking the form of a pandemic in the near future if corrective measures are not taken immediately,” she said.

The ICMR study report was released on Friday.

The data collected from the network has enabled compilation of drug-resistance data on six pathogenic groups on antimicrobial resistance from the country.

Data collected from the network is used to track resistance trends and to better understand mechanisms of resistance in the key priority pathogens using genotypic characterisation and whole genome sequencing (WGS).

This is the fifth detailed report on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) trends and patterns from the country published by the ICMR. This year’s report also carries hospital-acquired surveillance data.

According to the ICMR report, resistance to Imipenem, which is used to treat infections caused by bacteria E coli, has increased from 14 per cent in 2016 to 36 per cent in 2021.

The trend of decreasing susceptibility of bacteria to specific antibiotics was also observed with Klebsiella pneumoniae as it came down from 65 per cent in 2016 to 45 per cent in 2020 and 43 per cent in 2021.

The susceptibility term here is used to describe the vulnerability of the bacteria to the antibiotic.