We live in a world where common infections no longer induce anxiety for the general population. Suppose you begin to show symptoms of a urinary tract infection (UTI), such as feeling a burning sensation when you urinate. In that case, you can visit a clinic and be prescribed antibiotics. With the help of antibiotics, your UTI symptoms should subside as the infection is controlled by completing the entire prescription. But what if taking antibiotics was not an option?
We are on the verge of the post-antibiotic era, which means that antibiotic drugs will no longer control common bacterial infections.
As a PhD student, I study antimicrobial resistance (AMR), a phenomenon where antibiotic treatments no longer inhibit pathogenic bacteria. Many bacterial species already possess AMR to defend against harm in their natural environments, such as soil. However, the misuse and overuse of antibiotics, both within the domains of medicine and agriculture, has led to the acceleration of resistance evolution. Such evolutionary adaptation has generated what is now referred to as ‘superbugs’ (e.g. methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA) which are bacteria resistant to more than one antibiotic. In addition to the severe infections that these superbugs can cause, there are further harms associated with superbugs, such as increased economic costs due to prolonged hospitalization for patients and, ultimately, increased mortality.
By 2016, 700,000 estimated deaths a year were attributed to AMR globally.
This number is steadily increasing and is projected to reach 10 million by 2050. Citizens should find such a large number disturbing. The number is especially high because AMR is not a product of one source but instead from multiple interconnected sectors. For example, antibiotics are used in industrial animal farming in many countries (including Canada) to prevent or treat diseases. Unfortunately, antimicrobial therapy is still abused to promote animal growth for consumption by the food industry in some parts of the world. The antibiotics are poorly absorbed in the guts of animals, and the excreted active ingredients are leached into the surrounding soil and water. The contaminated soil and water may later be used for crop growth and irrigation. These farm products are ultimately consumed by us – the humans. This is how antibiotics that have been fed to animals can be widely disseminated. The real concerning culprit is the dissemination of genes that cause resistance behaviour in bacteria, often induced by something called “antibiotic pressure” faced in various settings. I’ll be saying more about what “antibiotic pressure” is and what it means for us in a later blog. I promise it will be worth the wait.
Today’s post presented just a glimpse into the global AMR crisis. Some of the numbers I’ve shown you here are very daunting. Still, international efforts to mitigate the AMR crisis to save one of the essential drugs in modern medicine are also astounding. I will be sharing the findings of my research with all of you in the coming year: the bad, the good, and how we might control the problem of AMR.
