CLAIRE C. LAURENCEArizona Daily Wildcat Dr. John E. Edwards Jr. speaks during the ninth annual Farness Lecture at University Medical Center yesterday afternoon.

Pharmaceutical companies are developing few new drugs to combat infectious diseases despite an increase in infections worldwide, a UCLA doctor told the UA medical community yesterday.

Infectious diseases are the third-leading cause of death in the United States, said Dr. John E. Edwards Jr., chief of infectious diseases in the department of medicine at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.

Edwards, who spoke yesterday at the University Medical Center, said the door on infectious diseases isn't closed. He stressed that emerging and re-emerging infections, resistance to antibiotics, and bioterrorism are causes for concern.

Infections on the rise in the United States include Lyme disease and West Nile virus, and the AIDS pandemic is more deadly than the plague of the 16th and 17th centuries, Edwards said.

Edwards said microorganisms that cause infectious diseases have mechanisms of resistance to medicine. For this reason, resistance to penicillin began to rise almost immediately after it was introduced.

He added that microorganisms have had approximately 3 1/2 billion years to adapt to changing conditions on Earth, as opposed to the 4 1/2 million years humans have existed.

Research and development expenditures for new drugs increased 44 percent from 1998 to 2002.

However, he said efforts have shifted from treating diseases to lifestyle improvement.

Medications for anxiety or depression and irritable bowel syndrome outnumber antibacterial drugs in production, Edwards said.

Since 1996, production of new antibacterial drugs has declined. There were none developed in 2002, and only two in 2001, Edwards said.

He outlined the consequences of not developing new drugs for infectious diseases. The U.S. population could see the reemergence of polio and has already seen the effects of SARS, for which doctors have no effective therapies. There are at least 40 million people infected with AIDS today.

"We are in the middle of a pandemic greater than we have seen before," Edwards said of AIDS.

He said he felt it most important that there be legislation to remove economic disincentives from the pharmaceutical industry.

"We need to bring the problem into a much higher level of focus than it is at the present time," Edwards said. He added that the general population has no idea of the magnitude of the problem.

Samantha Powis, a biomedical engineering doctoral student, said she was intrigued by the presentation.

"His comments addressing the effect of resistant bacteria were interesting. It provided a lot of background information," Powis said. "It showed a perspective of where things are heading."