Professionals issue alarm over antibiotic resistance evolution
Specialists are sounding the alarm about the escalating issue of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The advances made in medicine are at risk of being reversed, experts warn, potentially pushing us back to a time before the discovery of penicillin, as pointed out by Mathias Pletz, the president of the Paul Ehrlich Society for Infection Therapy (PEG), in Weimar.
The efficacy of antibiotics is under threat due to the increasing resistance. As a result, it's imperative to use antibiotics judiciously and continue developing antibiotics that can break through these resistances. Recent statistics from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) show that an estimated 35,000 deaths annually occur in the European Union due to infections caused by antibiotic-resistant pathogens.
It's been noted by the Robert Koch Institute that when antibiotics are administered, they don't eradicate all bacteria; instead, the resistant ones survive and multiply. The emergence of resistances can't be stopped entirely, but their spread can be slowed down.
Since 2017, only 12 new antibiotics have been approved, with ten of them belonging to classes against which resistance mechanisms have already been developed. This is a significant concern, as the production of antibiotics is no longer economically viable for pharmaceutical companies. Consequently, the German government is urged to provide immediate economic incentives to encourage pharmaceutical companies to continue producing antibiotics.
The following are the main categories of concern: the increasing resistance to antibiotics and the decrease in new antibiotics being approved. It's crucial for the main categories to be addressed effectively, as the lack of new antibiotics and the spread of antibiotic resistance could lead to a resurgence of infections that were once easily treatable, such as those before the discovery of penicillin.
