More people died of superbacteria in 2019 than HIV or malaria, study suggests

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/01/19/health/bacterial-antimicrobial-resistance/index.html

by PabloRobles • 5 years ago

93 28 5 years ago

edition.cnn.com

By "superbacteria" I mean "drug-resistant bacteria".

I linked the original study, but I saw it Spanish national media, and then here: https://edition.cnn.com/2022/01/19/health/bacterial-antimicr...

MaxBarraclough2• 5 years ago

The HN guidelines ask submissions not to edit the title except for certain narrow exceptions.

Also, here's a BBC article on the topic: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-60058120

dang2• 5 years ago

The title was from the cnn.com article. I've changed to that now from https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... - usually the best choice for studies like this is to link to the best third-party article and link to the paper in the thread.

legulere• 5 years ago

My hope is that phage therapy can solve the issue of drug-resistant bacteria. Also we really need to get our things together and work against misuse of antibiotics.

mschuster91• 5 years ago

Also we really need to get our things together and work against misuse of antibiotics.

Too late for that, we already have the superbugs. Not to say that reducing antibiotic usage in farms is not worth the effort (because it is), but we need to ramp up investment in basic R&D for antibiotics again - there is almost none of that any more since it is extremely cost-intensive and the medications are low-revenue [1].

ETA: Additionally, we could curb human antibiotic usage by making rapid tests for common viral infections more available. Routinely checking for strep throat and the various flu viruses both at-home and in clinical situations could save people a lot of completely unnecessary antibiotics courses - as well as teaching basic life education like "if it's not a bacterial infection behind your sore throat, an antibiotics course won't help at all, it will go away on itself after three to four days".

Lateral flow rapid tests are incredibly cheap to manufacture and (as the last two years have shown) capable of being self-administered - making them account for multiple sorts of antibodies is already done for COVID tests.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02884-3

zerr• 5 years ago

Why a phage therapy is not widespread?

gostsamo• 5 years ago

complex. it is made per bacteria type as far as I know and it does not scale like a chemical compound.

cstross3• 5 years ago

1. "Not invented here" (western medical practice largely ignored the USSR, where phage treatments were a big thing: journals didn't get translated, treatments didn't get picked up).

2. Not profitable. They were developed in the Soviet bloc hence not patented but it would have invalidated any patent in the west, so there was no lucrative monopoly to pursue.

After the collapse of the USSR western antibiotics flooded in; the home-grown technique (which was somewhat time-consuming and expensive: matching a phage to an infection requires lab work and specialist facilities) was undermined and fell into disuse.

artyomxyz• 5 years ago

It's pretty easy to buy phages in Russia. It is sold in almost any pharmacy, doctors sometimes recommend it, you can check if bacteria sample is sensitive to phage in almost any medical lab.

I even had an experience of treating infection with phages myself, as antibiotics had interactions with my other drugs. It went pretty well.

But in my case, course of treatment with phages is around 100$, while course of treatment with antibiotics is 5-10$.

cstross3• 5 years ago

I did a pharmacy degree circa 1983-87 in the UK.

Antibiotic resistance was already a pressing problem. Penicillin-V was little more use than a placebo as of 1984; Amoxicillin was in danger, MRSA was already out there. The big short-term hope was Augmentin (Amoxicillin/clavulanic acid) -- clavulanic acid was a beta-lactamase inhibitor, beta-lactamase being the primary pathway for penicillin resistance in bacteria, so it was somewhat effective against penicillin-resistant infections. But resistance was already showing up for almost every antibiotic on the market except vancomycin (which is pretty nasty stuff, toxicity-wise). Today, resistance to vancomycin and other antibiotics of last resort is a thing. So there are infections out there that will kill you gruesomely, just as there were in the 19th century and earlier, because we collectively dropped the ball.

As with anthropogenic climate change, the writing has been on the wall for decades -- and has been systematically ignored by policy-makers. Adding antibiotics to animal feed improves weight gain in farm animals so farmers still shovel the stuff by the bucketload. But it also applies a selection pressure for antibiotic resistance to the bacteria infesting those animals, and when they go to the slaughterhouse the resistant strains migrate into the human reservoir.

And this says nothing about the structural incentives to discount antibiotic R&D in the commercial pharmaceutical industry. (Bluntly: they're not profitable enough to bother with, because bacterial infections are acute disease -- you cure it in a few days or weeks, your customer goes away satisfied. Unlike antidepressants or anti-hypertensives or diabetes meds, which the patient is typically on for years to life.)

We should have restricted access to antibiotics the way we (try) to restrict opiates. Failing that we should have government funded R&D via non-profits. Only now it's too late and corrective action won't take effect for years.

Guessnotgauss• 5 years ago

We should start with cattle and livestock in deveolping nations like India. Farmers abuse antibiotics the most.

ErikVandeWater2• 5 years ago

All the health agencies in the world know this is a problem, but are there any actual changes being made to prevent the worst-case scenario?

I worry this is the same situation as Covid, where health agencies knew for years hospital capacity was stretched thin, and lo-and-behold, thousands of people die unnecessarily when a new virus arrives because hospital capacity was overwhelmed.

patall• 5 years ago

Afaik, one problem is that the health agencies can only do so much. Most antibiotics and antibiotics misuse happens in agriculture where a totally different agency is responsible. Yes, they should foster more research into new drugs, but the main challenge remains prophylactic animal treatment.

ErikVandeWater2• 5 years ago

It seems like a situation where hospitals could be designed in such a way to reduce the likelihood of creating 'superbacteria.' Certainly some must be better than others?

They could also address society generally having poor health - If the CDC pounded the table about unhealthy foods/the obesity epidemic I'm sure it could move the needle in some way. Addressing the obesity epidemic would be killing 100+ birds with one stone.

hogrider• 5 years ago

It's like insurance, they think they won't need it and they don't have any incentive to do the right thing (spend more, much more, for a catastrophic but low chance scenario).

ppod• 5 years ago

Our approach can be divided into five broad components: number of deaths where infection played a role, proportion of infectious deaths attributable to a given infectious syndrome, proportion of infectious syndrome deaths attributable to a given pathogen, the percentage of a given pathogen resistant to an antibiotic of interest, and the excess risk of death or duration of an infection associated with this resistance

The headline that you wrote phrases this as "died of superbacteria", does this relate to the number where an infection played a role or the number attributable to a given pathogen?

pshirshov• 5 years ago

Well. There are two old St.Aureus vaccines which, in combination, allowed me to eradicate MRSA which I got during a hospital stay. One these vaccines was created long time ago in USSR for veterinary workers, another one - to treat skin infections in babies. Both are still produced and available though most of the doctors are not aware of them. Both, of course, were never tested in proper trials.

Not like anyone cares.

https://www.rlsnet.ru/tn_index_id_5850.htm

https://www.vidal.ru/drugs/therapeutic_staphylococcal_vaccin...

b112• 5 years ago

Interesting. I wonder on the issues, efficacy, etc.

TB vaccine is troublesome and not that effective, to the point that some debate it should not be used, tetanus seems wildly successful.

(These are the only other bacteria vaccines I know of)

greatpatton• 5 years ago

They are many bacterial vaccine out there against pneumococcal, meningococcal, typhoid fever, cholera, haemophilus influenzae type B etc.

dang2• 5 years ago

The study is here: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

tim333• 5 years ago

There's some hope maybe with

Microorganisms found in dirt have yielded antibiotics that can kill pathogens resistant to multiple drugs. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-01931-4

and similar stuff? We could do with some government action to develop some and ban using them in farming.

More people died of superbacteria in 2019 than HIV or malaria, study suggests

Related Stories