Antimicrobial stewardship policy: time to revisit the strategy?

Recent data indicate that both the overall numbers of antibiotic prescription and the frequency of multidrug-resistant bacteria are increasing significantly. These threatening features are observed, despite national antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) policies aimed at decreasing antibiotic use. AMS should also focus on the initial steps leading to antibiotic prescription.

[Ambrosia pollinosis].

Pollinosis is now called seasonal allergic rhinitis by the international terminology but pollinosis includes many other symptoms and so we will use the term Ambrosia pollinosis in this article. The characteristics of ragweed pollinosis are: severity, duration from August to September and the presence of asthma and/or tracheitis in about 50% of cases. Ambrosia: phanerogam, dicotyledon, annual plant, monoic.

[Ambrosia, Franseria, Xanthium from the Bonaparte Herbarium].

Recently, French Association for Ragweed Study (AFEDA) founders published, in French, a book "Ambrosia, ragweed, biological pollutants". This association was founded in 1982. The authors referred to Bonaparte Herbarium set up in the Université Claude-Bernard Lyon 1.

[Aeropalynological Surveillance Rhone-Alpes (ASRA: a new network of surveillance and information].

The spread of ragweed in the Lyon region and Rhône valley has lead two associations regarding this problem: Association Française d'Etudes Des Ambroisies (AFEDA) and Groupement d'Allergologie et d'Immunologie Clinique du Rhône-Moyen (GAICRM) to join their competences and create a new group: Surveillance Aéropalynologique Rhône-Alpes (SARA). SARA manages six pollen traps in the Lyon area and central Rhône valley and has set up an original and effective information network.

[Pollinosis and use of anti-allergic drugs: ragweed in the Rhone-Alpine region].

Ragweed pollinosis was first described in the middle Rhône valley in the early sixties. Prevalence has increased steadily since that time. The aim of the present study was to determine whether this phenomenon is perceptible in terms of anti-allergic drug sales (eye drops, nasal spray, oral antihistamines) and if so, to compare sales with those related to hay fever.