A new report estimates that by 2050, 40 per cent of all infections will be resistant to antimicrobial treatment. This will directly cause 13,700 previously preventable deaths.
Resistance happens when bacteria change to protect themselves from an antibiotic.
shutterstock/Toey Toey
Healthcare workers in sub-Saharan Africa lack access to laboratory diagnostics and often have to guess which antibiotics to use for presumed infections.
Researchers have evidence of another method that bacteria use to avoid antibiotics.
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Many articles describe the rise of superbugs - bacteria that are resistant to antibiotic drugs - as inevitable. But society has the knowledge to stop the spread of these microbes.
Ivan Erill, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Resistance to antibiotics is not a new trait, and it is impossible to prevent. But it is possible to avoid its spread.
Terry Roark holds a photo of her son, Thomas, at the state Capitol in Sacramento, California, April 24, 2019, to voice opposition to a bill that would allow state health officials more say in vaccine exemptions.
Rich Pedroncelli/AP Photo
As measles cases surge, people blame parents who refuse to vaccinate their children. A sociologist who has studied public health says anti-vaxxers may not be so different from the rest of us.
Monica Slavin, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre; Arjun Rajkhowa, The University of Melbourne; Karin Thursky, The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity e Megan Crane, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre
Candida auris is a fungus which breeds most commonly in health-care settings. It’s cause for concern because it’s hard to detect, and is resistant to many anti-fungal drugs.
Drug discovery can get an assist from what nature’s already devised.
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As antibiotic resistance increases globally, the heat is on to find new alternatives to treat infections. Chemists can get a head start by looking at compounds produced in nature by fishes’ microbes.
Bacteria are becoming resistant to even the most powerful antibiotics. These expensive, hard-to-treat infections are prompting physicians to reassess using viruses to destroy bacteria.
Antibiotic resistance is common in bacteria where there’s a large human population and poor sanitation. For the first time however, it’s been found in the remote Arctic.
Antibiotic-resistant germs can thrive in the presence of these drugs.
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Our bodies have a set of defenses that are finely tuned for killing invading microbes. With rising cases of drug-resistant bacteria, maybe boosting our natural defenses is the best medicine.
Paramedics bury a man who died of the Nipah virus in Kozhikode, southern India, in May 2018. There is no vaccine for the virus, which can cause raging fevers, convulsions and vomiting, and kills up to 75 per cent of people infected.
(AP Photo/K.Shijith)
As new viruses “jump” from wildlife to humans and we struggle with antimicrobial resistance and even climate change, a new interdisciplinary approach to human health might just save the day.