Mapping Antibiotic Use and Resistance

New data reveals troubling trends in the pharmaceutical fight against bacteria.

Written byBob Grant

| 2 min read

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NovamoxinWIKIMEDIA COMMONS, BMRAMON

Though rates of antibiotic use across the United States have been decreasing, people in Southeast regions of the country take about twice as many antibiotics as residents of the Northwest, according to a new analysis that tracked use of the drugs from 1999 to 2007. West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Alabama were the five states with the highest antibiotic use, while Alaska, Oregon, California, and Washington had the lowest use rates. As a whole, the United States had a lower combined resistance score—meaning antibiotic-resistant pathogens are less of a problem—than some countries in Eastern and Southern Europe, but had a higher score than many Nordic countries and European powers, such as the UK and Germany.

While overall antibiotic use in the United States dropped ...

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Meet the Author

Bob Grant
From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer. Before joining the team, he worked as a reporter at Audubon and earned a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In his previous life, he pursued a career in science, getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Bob edited Reading Frames and other sections of the magazine.
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