23,000 Die Every Year From Antibiotic-resistant Infections, CDC Reports

Two million people living in the United States contract antibiotic-resistant infections every year, 23,000 of which die, a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found.

The report used a variety of factors, including health and economic impacts, to rank pathogens as urgent, serious or concerning.

Those classified as urgent include drug-resistant gonorrhea, Clostridium difficile and carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae. A diarrheal infection associated with antibiotic use, C. difficile alone results in roughly 250,000 hospitalizations and 14,000 deaths every year.

"Antibiotic resistance is rising for many different pathogens that are threats to health," CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden said in a statement. "If we don't act now, our medicine cabinet will be empty and we won't have the antibiotics we need to save lives."

In addition to a very real toll on human life, officials cite significant avoidable costs tied to antibiotic-resistant infections.

Studies estimate that antibiotic resistance adds $20 billion in excess direct health care costs in addition to $35 billion in lost productivity every year.

According to the CDC, the use of antibiotics represents the largest contributing factor to antibiotic resistance, with up to 50 percent of those prescribed either unnecessary or "not prescribed appropriately."

Use of antibiotics in food-producing animals, meanwhile, should be administered responsibly, the agency noted. For this reason, the CDC recently proposed guidelines outlining the use of "medically important" antibiotics for use only when targeting diseases and health problems.

"Every time antibiotics are used in any setting, bacteria evolve by developing resistance. This process can happen with alarming speed," said Dr. Steve Solomon, director of CDC's Office of Antimicrobial Resistance. "These drugs are a precious, limited resource -- the more we use antibiotics today, the less likely we are to have effective antibiotics tomorrow."