The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has recommended that colistin-containing medicines should only be used as a second line treatment in animals and that their sales should be minimised across all European Union (EU) Member States to reduce the risk of antimicrobial resistance. The advice updates EMA guidance from 2013 and takes into account comments made by stakeholders during a public consultation that ended on 26 June 2016.
The European Commission asked for this update in response to the discovery of a new mechanism of resistance in bacteria to colistin caused by the mcr-1 gene.
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