Anti-antibiotic wounds are coming in and we are wildly unprepared

The magnitude of the problem is already huge. According to the World Health Organization, antibiotic-resistant bacteria are "one of the greatest threats to global health, food security and development today," warning that diseases like pneumonia, tuberculosis and gonorrhea are increasingly difficult to treat.

In the United States alone, as many as 15% of hospitalized patients (and 65% of nursing home residents) already harbor drug-resistant bacteria, although not all of them cause infection. According to the Centers for Disease Control, each year, 2 million Americans contract drug-resistant bacterial infections, resulting in the death of nearly a quarter of a million people. A 2014 study predicted that by 2050, antimicrobial resistance could kill up to 10 million people each year. All of these estimates are conservative.

As with climate change, the proliferation of drug-resistant bacteria is so important that it's hard to imagine its scope and to give what a future dominated by super-bacteria would look like. But we have some glimpses. In 2017, an American died of a bacterial infection that challenged all 26 types antibiotics available in the United States In April, a strain of E. coli Antibiotic-resistant E. coli appeared in four liver transplant patients in New York. This year, The New York Times reported on the worldwide spread of Candida auris, a drug-resistant fungus that is so pernicious that hospitals must remove ceiling and floor tiles as part of the sterilization process. In the last ten years, it has been used in hospitals in 30 countries.

One of the major causes of the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is now well known to doctors: doctors prescribe too much medicine and patients stop taking it before the infection is completely cured. And Americans consume an incredible amount of antibiotics, with more than 270 million prescriptions written in a single year. This is not only a question of choice of doctors and patient behavior, but also of sectoral practices in agriculture and food production. For example, according to public health journalist Maryn McKenna, author of Big chicken, Poultry farms regularly pump in their hens a quantity of antibiotics such that people who consume them risk getting gastrointestinal infections and drug-resistant urinary tract.

Hospitals and CDCs are struggling to find ways to prevent the spread of superbugs, but for now, one thing is clear: they will not go to war using pharmaceuticals. Basically, the drug companies have quietly withdrawn from the fight. Last year, the pharmaceutical group Novartis ended its antibacterial research activities, joining other major drug companies that had already done so. But if the whole world is facing more deadly diseases than ever before, why are pharmaceutical companies deciding to stop their relevant research?

according to Internal business:

"The cost of developing a new antibiotic is no cheaper than that of drugs for other therapeutic areas, however, the commercial potential and the return on investment of companies developing new antibiotics are significantly lower than those for the treatment of chronic diseases such as diabetes or heart disease, "said Gary Disbrow, deputy director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, which is part of the US Department of Health and Social Services.

This is not a new trend either. Starting in the early 2000s, companies stopped investing in antibiotic research and the number of new drugs in development "has gone from tens to three", according to National Geographic. From a business perspective, it has a strong financial sense. An infection is a short-term treatment and is therefore not as lucrative as treating a chronic condition such as asthma or anxiety, which requires prescriptions and long-term care renewals. In addition, bacteria naturally continue to develop resistance, forcing companies to invest always more time and money to continue the pharmaceutical arms race. The situation is so critical that the Food and Drug Administration is trying to find ways to create incentives to prevent companies from giving up.