Researchers fighting increased antimicrobial resistance
Drug-resistant pathogens directly kill or contribute to the deaths of an estimated 5 million people every year. Many have grown resistant to the most effective medicines, and developing alternatives is growing critical.
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00:00 Antimicrobial resistance affects us all because anyone could at some point be
00:05 infected by potentially deadly common microbes that no longer respond to the
00:10 medicines we use to treat them. Globally AMR pathogens already kill more people
00:16 than either HIV/AIDS or malaria. It's a trend that has experts very worried.
00:22 It's getting worse. Antibiotic resistance is rising. If we don't do anything now we
00:29 will have a post antibacterial era by 2050. The most direct threat to human
00:37 health is posed by antibiotic resistant bacteria often called superbugs. The WHO
00:44 has identified priority pathogens among them drug-resistant Clostridium difficile
00:49 which can cause life-threatening diarrhea as well as a drug-resistant
00:54 strain of the bacteria that causes gonorrhea. Half a dozen others are even
00:58 more deadly. If you combine all of those six pathogens they're responsible for
01:05 close to 75% of all deaths attributable to drug-resistant infections in 2019.
01:11 Bloodstream infections, pneumonia, meningitis, these are the the leading
01:21 diseases that are causing problems. But antibiotic resistant bacteria are just
01:26 one aspect of the issue. Viruses, among them HIV, can also grow unresponsive to
01:33 the drugs used to treat them as can parasites like the plasmodium that
01:37 causes malaria. And doctors are also now seeing many more fungal infections that
01:43 were once easily treatable acquiring resistance to conventional medications.
01:48 Resistance can develop very fast. If a new antibiotic was introduced for use
01:55 right now, today, so on average we would see reports of resistance in
01:59 about two to three years. But in the lab, if you do this in the lab, you'll see
02:03 this in 11 days or something like that for certain antibiotics. I think we have
02:08 to remember it's a natural evolutionary process and this is accelerated by the
02:13 misuse and overuse of antimicrobials. We can't stop it but we can slow it down.
02:18 In the evolutionary arms race with enemies that are too tiny to see with the naked
02:23 eye, the situation is growing critical. We have to develop new antibiotics and
02:29 other treatments and use the ones we already have more wisely.