Rise of the Post-Antibiotic Era
Reflections on antimicrobial resistance and what scientists can do next to rise to this challenge.
Upcoming Event: Join me this weekend for a free, open to the public event at the Sharon Forks Library (Sunday, April 21, 2:00pm - 3:00pm, Sharon Forks Library, 2820 Old Atlanta Road, Cumming, GA 30041). I’ll be speaking about medicinal plants, herbaria, and my book, The Plant Hunter. More details can be found on their website. I’ll have copies of The Plant Hunter available for sale and signings, plus some treasures from the Emory Herbarium on display.
In 2016, the O’Neill report “Tackling Drug-Resistant Infections Globally” announced an alarming prediction that there would be 10 million deaths annually across the globe by mid-century due to antimicrobial resistant infections. More recently, a 2022 publication in The Lancet, ‘Global burden of bacterial antimicrobial resistance in 2019: a systematic analysis’ found that 1.7 million deaths were directly attributed to bacterial antimicrobial resistance (AMR), and more than 3.5 million deaths associated with bacterial AMR. In other words, we are right on track to reaching 10 million deaths per year by 2050.
How did we get here?
The rise of AMR has been attributed to many factors, chief among these being the misuse and overuse of these precious drugs. Overuse extends far beyond the medical clinic and into farmers’ fields. We still employ antibiotics to an alarming degree in agriculture, not only in livestock but also in certain crops. Moreover, we have hit a wall in terms of discovery and development. In fact, the last new antibiotic class brought to market was discovered in the 1980s! The majority of our current antibiotic classes in clinical use today were discovered in the 1950s and 1960s. Primarily, these are microbial natural products—molecules found in nature—that originate from microbes found in soil samples collected across the globe.
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