The Importance Of The Antibiotic Resistance Crisis

With all of our modern advances, it seems somewhat strange that chronic health problems have become so commonplace. When antibiotics were discovered, they predicted the end of disease. Instead, we now have a world full of frightening antibiotic resistant infections.

The war against bacteria and their ability to evolve at a much faster rate than humans can create antibiotics (a medicine that hinders and disrupts bacterial growth and or destroys it) to fight against them has the human race at a disadvantage. With more and more bacteria being found to have strains of drug-resistant chains is creating a health crisis around the world as global health officials try to find a way to protect their populations against this up and coming threat, and the issues it poses for the future of medicine and treatment of infections. Due to increased use of antibiotics in unneeded situations, bacteria are having more chances to let mutations that are immune to antibiotics be spread through other bacteria. This is causing more cases of antibiotic resistant bacteria and increasing the number of them. Drug resistance results in higher costs due to longer hospital pays and more expensive antibiotics, need for supervision, patient education, and new drug developments.

In the last fifty years, the most prominent and transformative medical advancement made was the discovery of antibiotics and disinfectants. On the contrary, with the uncovering of antibiotics came the repercussion of the progressively threatening antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria or ‘superbugs’ formed due to the lack of care from the people to follow through with simple safety procedures in order to entirely get rid of bacterial illnesses and infections. Appropriate precautions are necessary and expectedly need to be taken, in order to minimize and possibly prohibit the formation, continual growth and limit the strength of resistance in the antibiotic-resistant superbugs, and most importantly to preserve medical advancements

Antibiotic-resistant microbes infect more than two million Americans and kill over 100,000 each year. These numbers will continue to grow unless we make a drastic effort to curtail them. The necessary response is threefold and includes legislation, awareness, and activism. I will address all of these.

The root of this problem lies in what Charles Darwin called the “survival of the fittest” in which organisms eventually adapt and evolve in response to their environment and its impending threats in order to survive. Bacteria is now doing this in response to antibiotics, which are purposed to kill bacteria so as to eliminate infections and diseases. However, now more and more bacteria are evolving to form antibiotic-resistant strains that there are no or very expensive antibiotics or treatments for yet, even if they were once easily treated diseases. Often this is a result of overuse or improper use of antibiotics by both medical professionals and patients. Overuse, such as attempting to use antibiotics for infections that do not warrant them, such as the common cold, allows existing bacteria to devise mechanisms such as “neutralizing” antibiotics, removing antibiotics, adapting their structure so as to become impenetrable to the antibiotics, or improving upon their genetics. Improper use of bacteria, such as beginning an antibiotic, but failing to use it to completion, also allows bacteria to do the

“The Antibiotic Resistance Crisis” is an article on the National Center for Biotechology Information's website and consequently follows many of the conventions expected of an online article. Before the main body of text is even shown, the author's name is written and link to further information about the author is provided. This allows the reader to research what the author has published before and gain a better appreciation of their past work. The article itself is single-columned and divided into a a series of headings and subheadings that help organize and divide the text into smaller pieces. These pieces relate to the overall topic of how the overuse and misuse of antibiotics over the past century has led to the increasing ineffectiveness of antibiotics against various strains of bacteria. Because the article is published by a scientific organization, it is a fairly

According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), “Antibiotic resistance is the ability of microbes to resist the effects of drugs – that is, the germs are not killed, and their growth is not stopped. Although some people are at greater risk than others, no one can completely avoid the risk of antibiotic-resistant infections” (“About Antimicrobial Resistance”). Antibiotic resistance has a higher chance of occurring with the more antibiotics taken, as the body adapts more and more each time. The CDC has collected data across the country, and has concluded that the estimated number of deaths caused by antibiotic resistance is 23,000, and that the number of illnesses is slightly higher than 2 million (“About Antimicrobial Resistance”). Already antibiotic resistance has affected millions of lives, and will continue to affect many more until antibiotic overuse is stopped

The development of antibiotics was an important advancement in 20th century medicine. Previously deadly infectious diseases are now routinely treated with antibiotics. Moreover, for modern-day medical procedures such as chemotherapy treatment to be successful, antibiotic use is necessary. For these reasons, the prospect of bacteria developing widespread resistance to antibiotics is a major concern as it would render many modern-day medical therapies unviable.

According the World Health Organization (WHO), antibiotic resistance is one of the world’s greatest health threats to date (Haddox, 2013). In the article, The Health Threat of Antibiotic Resistance, Gail Haddox (2013) discusses the danger antibiotic resistance poses in today’s society and strategies to prevent the expansion of antibiotic resistance. In Europe alone, an estimated 25,000 deaths have been attributed to multi-resistant infections (Haddox, 2013). Common infections are now harder to treat due to the increased resistance to antibiotics across the world, in fact some are becoming untreatable. Antibiotics should be treated like oil, a non-renewable resource (Haddox, 2013).

One of the greatest problems our world faces today is rising antibiotic resistance in viruses, bacteria and pathogens in general. This is a human-driven problem; the more we use antibiotics to save lives today, the stronger the pathogens infecting and harming us tomorrow will be. The entire problem is based in natural selection because antibiotics kill all of a pathogen except for a special few who were themselves deformed in a way that enabled them to survive. These then become the pathogens that infect everyone, so the previous solution is no longer able to solve the problem the next time around. There can be no single concrete solution, but rather endless research and discovery to stop these pathogens from causing death and destruction

The overuse of antibiotics has been a problem for well over a decade. This misuse leads to many nonvisible problems arising within the human population. As the use of antibiotics increases, the number of antibiotic resistant bacteria also increases. When bacteria become resistant to an antibiotic, another antibiotic must be used to try and kill it and the cycle becomes vicious. Michael Martin, Sapna Thottathil, and Thomas Newman stated that antimicrobial resistance is, “an increasingly serious threat to global public health that requires action across all government sectors and society” (2409).

(3, 4, 6) The United States reports two million people infected with an antimicrobial resistant bacteria and out of two million individuals, 23,000 of those people die each year. (7) Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) is a reported nosocomial, antimicrobial resistant bacteria that infects 250,000 individuals each year. (7, 8) Out of the 250,000 individuals infected with Clostridium difficile (C. difficile), there is a recorded 14,000 deaths. (7, 8) Bacterial resistance is an emerging and ongoing public health threat that causes significantly higher rates of morbidity and mortality compared to antimicrobial-susceptible bacteria. (3, 4, 6) A key factor contributing to the rise in antimicrobial resistant bacteria is the significance of person-to-person or indirect contact, which coherently passes resistant strains of bacteria. (8) The effectiveness and informal access of antibiotics in the 20th century has led to overuse and the emergence of antimicrobial resistant bacteria. (3)

Since the beginning of the antibiotic error in the mid 20th century, antimicrobial resistance has been recognized. The increased use of antimicrobial agents in the recent years has resulted in the development of resistance to these drugs. Clinical threats have however been minimized by the availability of newer agents (Bonomo & Tolmasky 2007). The World Health Organization (WHO) defines antimicrobial resistance as the resistance of a microorganism to an antimicrobial medicine to which it was previously sensitive (WHO 2012). A variety of resistance mechanisms have been developed by bacteria to counter the introduction of successive classes of antibiotics. This has lead to heightened interest in the study of antimicrobial

Antibiotics are widely used drugs in the day – to – day medical treatments of the 20th century. Diseases that were once almost threatening are now cured sparingly easily by means of antibiotics. For one thing, if antibiotics are used in right doses they serve as life – saving tools, on the other hand over use of antibiotics is life threatening. Antibiotics were particularly used for treating the bacterial infections but, in modern day medical sciences antibiotics have become the most commonly prescribed drugs for both bacterial and viral diseases/ infections. For the reason that, over use of antibiotics is causing the common bacteria to gain resistance against the medicines. As a result of this, antibiotics are not performing as they are intended to use (Mike Stobbe, 2013). Consumption of antibiotics in large quantities has proven to cause severe health problems like, obesity, type 1 diabetes, inflammatory bowel diseases, allergies certain hormonal production and asthma.

Antibiotic resistance is one of the greatest threats to global health, Food security and development.