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Antibiotic resistance

The paper disks have different antibiotics:
♦ Antibiotics in the discs in the culture on the left prevent bacteria from proliferating.
♦ Bacteria in the culture on the right are resistant to most of the antibiotics.

Antibiotics kill certain types of bacteria. Over time, those bacteria change to develop resistance to the antibiotics. Called antibiotic resistance, this is one of the most serious problems facing modern surgery and medicine.[1][2][3] It is also one of the best examples of evolution in action. According to The Lancet, at least 1.2 million people died because of drug-resistant bacterial infections in 2019, more than from HIV or malaria.[4]

Antibiotic resistance spreads very quickly, far faster than microbiologists expected. "As long as new drugs keep coming, resistance is not a problem. But there has not been a new class of antibiotics discovered since the 1980s".[1] Some scientists have developed new antibiotics to combat resistant bacteria.[5][6] However, there is a lag-time of about eight years between discovery and possible availability for general use. The process is also extremely costly.[7]

The National Health Service is encouraging pharmaceutical companies to create new treatments by paying up to £20 million a year for new antibiotics no matter how many are prescribed, so they so they get paid even if the drugs are just kept in reserve for special cases or an emergency. [8]

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Gallagher, James 2015. Analysis: antibiotic apocalypse – is the end nigh? BBC News Health & Science. [1]
  2. ↑ Walsh, Fergus 2014. 'Golden age' of antibiotics 'set to end'. BBC News Science & Environment. [2]
  3. ↑ Roxby, Philippa. Millions are dying from drug-resistant infections, global report says. [3]
  4. ↑ "New bacterial 'dark matter' offers hope for a drug-resistant world | Financial Times". www.ft.com. Retrieved 2023-08-23.
  5. ↑ "New antibiotic effective against drug-resistant bacteria: First selective nucleoside-analog inhibitor of bacterial RNA polymerase". ScienceDaily. Retrieved 2017-10-09. According to Science Daily, "Scientists from Rutgers University-New Brunswick, the biotechnology company NAICONS Srl., and elsewhere have discovered a new antibiotic effective against drug-resistant bacteria: pseudouridimycin"
  6. ↑ Knapton, Sarah (2016-03-14). "First new antibiotic in 30 years discovered in major breakthrough". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 2017-10-09. A team from Northeastern University has "discovered a way of using an electronic chip to grow the microbes in the soil and then isolate their antibiotic chemical compounds. They discovered that one compound, Teixobactin, is highly effective against common bacterial infections Clostridium difficile, Mycobacterium tuberculous and Staphylococcus aureus".
  7. ↑ Paul, Steven M.; Mytelka, Daniel S.; Dunwiddie, Christopher T.; Persinger, Charles C.; Munos, Bernard H.; Lindborg, Stacy R.; Schacht, Aaron L. (2010). "How to improve R&D productivity: The pharmaceutical industry's grand challenge". Nature Reviews Drug Discovery. 9 (3): 203–14. doi:10.1038/nrd3078. PMID 20168317. S2CID 1299234.
  8. ↑ "NHS plans wider rollout of UK subscription model for antibiotics". Financial Times. 3 July 2023. Retrieved 10 July 2023.

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