PHARMACEUTICALS
BATTLING THE SUPERBUGS
A 18 02 | 2018
round 700,000 people worldwide die every year from bacteria that have developed resistance to
antibiotics. In the UK alone, that figure is at least 12,000 – more deaths than from breast cancer. And those numbers look set to rise even higher. ‘It’s not just the fact that
resistance is increasing – that’s inevitable,’ says Nick Brown, consultant medical microbiologist at Addenbrooke’s Hospital Cambridge, UK, and director of advocacy group, Antibiotic Action. ‘The issue is more the rate of increase in resistance, which appears to be accelerating.’
The Infectious Diseases Society of America recently reported resistance to drugs within six months of antibiotics coming onto the market – and in some cases, even before the drug goes on the market. Many bacterial strains are increasingly displaying resistance to combinations of commonly used and last-resort antibiotics. Data released by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control in November 2017 reveal that more than 50% of Escherichia coli isolates sampled across Europe are resistant to at least one antibiotic, with resistance rates increasing between 2013 and 2016; Acinetobacter species, which
can cause pneumonia, show high rates of combined resistance. ‘The end of the antibiotic era isn’t on the horizon just yet,’ Brown says. ‘But we can see it wouldn’t take much to get that way.’ Failure to tackle antibiotic-
resistant superbugs could result in 10m deaths/year by 2050, according to the UK government-commissioned Review on Antimicrobial Resistance. The UN and G20 have both made political commitments to combat the problem. Nevertheless, time is running out. ‘This is an urgent and rapidly
rising global health problem,’ says Ghada Zoubiane, science lead for
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