🦠 What are superbugs?

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What are Superbugs?

Superbugs are bacterial or fungal infections that have developed immunity to common antibiotics.

They are caused by growing antimicrobial resistance (AMR), which is itself caused by bacteria adapting to existing antibiotic medicines that are widely used around the world.

Superbugs are becoming a major problem for public health worldwide, as the overuse of antibiotics worldwide accelerates the rate at which bacteria become resistant to standard antibiotics.

Why should you care?

• Regular infections that were once easily treatable can become life-threatening

• Currently, about 1 million people die annually from antibiotic-resistant infections

• By 2050, superbugs could kill more people annually than cancer

A new study commissioned by the British Prime Minister & the Wellcome Trust estimated that annual deaths from antibiotic resistant superbugs could rise to 10 million by 2050.

Dr. Dennis Dixon, an NIH expert in bacterial and fungal diseases, said:

The three biggest causes of growing antibiotic resistance:

• Overuse of antibiotics in humans 💊

  • The CDC says that 28% of antibiotic prescriptions given in outpatient settings are unnecessary

• Massive antibiotic use in livestock farming 🐄

• Poor infection control in hospitals 🤒

The widespread use of antibiotics among farm animal populations is arguably the biggest cause of superbug development.

About 75% of the world's antibiotics are used on farm animals - usually without them presenting any symptoms of bacterial infection.

Most of the animals that these drugs are administered to live in factory farms, where poor hygiene & cramped conditions make animals more likely to get — and spread — bacterial infections.

But most of these drugs aren’t administered because the animals are sick or at risk of becoming sick.

They’re used because they help the animals to grow larger!

These factory farms have become a breeding ground for superbugs, which spread among the animal population — and ultimately the human population — as the chart below shows.

Development Deficit: 

Another problem is that there aren’t many new antibiotics in the drug research development pipeline.

According to a 2021 report from the World Health Organization, none of the 43 new antibiotics in development are designed to fight the “most dangerous bacteria.”

Now, all this bad news might have you asking: 

Is there hope?

Thankfully, scientists aren't sitting idle as the superbug threat grows.

Governments worldwide are offering funding for research into new antibiotics, as they grapple with the long-term threat posed by superbugs.

New approaches like bacteriophage therapy (using viruses that eat bacteria) and AI-driven drug discovery are showing promise in the fight against superbugs.

And a group of Harvard researchers recently discovered a synthetic molecule that can kill many common strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria when used as an antibiotic.

One of the graduate students who helped to discover the new antibiotic said:

For most of history, bacterial infections were one of the leading causes of human death.

We stopped this trend about 100 years ago by developing penicillin and other antibiotics.

Let’s hope the growing threat of superbugs doesn’t bring us back to a world where a simple scrape or bug bite can turn deadly.

ART OF THE DAY

Five Times Four Equals Twenty by Wassily Kandinsky. 1943.