Resistance to reserve antibiotics, the drugs held back for infections that nothing else will treat, rose from 9 percent to 32 percent in pediatric intensive care units over roughly two decades, according to an analysis of more than 100,000 bacterial samples from children in 82 countries.
The study, published in JAMA Pediatrics and covered by CIDRAP, examined 106,581 isolates collected from patients aged 0 to 18 between 2004 and 2022. Resistance to watch antibiotics in ICUs rose over the same period from 15 percent to 33 percent.
