'ResistanceMap' tracks antibiotic resistance online

"Extending the Cure," a research project of the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy that looks at antibiotic resistance, on Wednesday launched a map "designed to be a tool for public health, researchers, doctors, the media and the public to track resistant pathogens, which is a growing problem around the world," the Washington Post's "The Checkup" blog reports. The "ResistanceMap," funded in part by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, "compiles data from a variety of sources," including the CDC, FDA, European Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance Network and Canadian Antimicrobial Resistance Alliance, the blog notes. "Among the trends the map illustrates is that Western Europe is doing a better job than the United States of controlling certain resistant microbes, ... [t]he United States and Ireland have the highest rates of vancomycin-resistant enterococcus (VRE)," and "[t]he South has higher rates of resistance compared to the West or Northeast in the United States," the blog writes (Stein, 9/21).