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A sample of E. coli, a bacteria which can be fatal if untreated. Picture: AP Source: AP

THE overuse of antibiotics is causing the spread of dangerous superbugs and threatening to throw medical science back decades, experts warn.

A recent study has found one in five urinary-tract infections - caused by E. coli - are now resistant to first-use antibiotics.

Adelaide Professor John Turnidge, who chairs the Australian Group on Antimicrobial Resistance, which carried out the research, said the increase in superbugs - those which are resistant to multiple antibiotics - would cause deaths.

What was once an easily treated infection would instead require hospitalisation and "last-line" antibiotics, Prof Turnidge said. Once a bug builds up resistance to these antibiotics, there would be nothing left to use.

"If we can't eliminate the bacteria, chances are that it will take them away ... people will die," Prof Turnidge said.

"People died of simple infections in the past and (now) only a small proportion of those that get infections will die." The AGAR report found that 21 per cent of E. coli samples were resistant to trimethoprim, 21 per cent were also resistant to amoxycillin-clavulanate, and 15 per cent resistant to cephazolin. Resistance to ampicillin was even more widespread, being found in 43 per cent of samples.

Prof Turnidge said GPs and the public needed to reduce their reliance on antibiotics.

"People think antibiotics will make them better quicker, but if it's a virus it won't make any difference," he said.

"The whole health-care system needs to recognise that there is a serious responsibility here to be prudent in their use of antibiotics and to save them for those who genuinely need them, not to be giving them to people just in case.

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