The first antibiotic was discovered in 1928 by Alexander Fleming.
Ever since then, doctors have been warning that an overuse of antibiotics could lead
us one day to a ‘post-antibiotic era’ where drug-resistant superbugs have grown
immune to antibiotics and infections can no longer be held at bay.
Well, according to Robert Redfield, the Director of the CDC, the post antibiotic era is already
here.
Welp, Fu*** [Drop into intro mid curse]
In March 1942, Anne Miller, a 33 year old woman was near death at New Haven Medical
Center in Michigan, suffering from a strep infection, a common cause of death 70 years
ago.
The infection had made it into her bloodstream and her condition seemed bleak.
She had been hospitalized for a month, often delirious, with her temperature spiking to
nearly 107 degrees.
Her doctors had tried everything to save her including drugs, blood transfusions, and surgery.
All had failed.
On March 14th, she was very near to death and doctors, desperate to save her, administered
an experimental drug; penicillin.
Discovered 14 years earlier, the drug had been shown effective at killing bacteria in
petri dishes, but had never been administered to a human.
Miraculously, in just hours, she recovered, becoming the first person in the world to
be saved by an antibiotic.
Rather than dying in her thirties, Anne Miller would live another 57 years to reach the ripe
old age of 90.
But now the CDC director cautions the news from reporting on a ‘post-antibiotic era’
when antibiotics are no longer effective at fighting off even commonplace bacteria saying
‘We’re living in a time when some miracle drugs no longer perform miracles and families
are being ripped apart by a microscopic enemy.’
Today, more than half a century later, germs like the one that infected Anne Miller, which
once killed millions, are making a resurgence as they’re becoming increasingly resistant
to antibiotics.
In 2017, drug-resistant "superbugs" in the US infected 2.8 million people and caused
more than 35,000 deaths, up more than 50% from just 4 years prior.
And competing reports from the Washington University School of Medicine estimate that
drug resistant bacteria kill nearly five times more than that a year, as hospitals attribute
deaths from infections to other primary causes like cancer.
Even on the low end, that would mean an infection every 11 seconds and a death every 15 minutes.
Antibiotics are among the most commonly prescribed drugs for people and they’re even given
to livestock to prevent disease in tightly packed herds.
Unfortunately, many antibiotics prescribed to people and animals are unnecessary, like
in response to viruses, like those that cause colds and the flu, and it’s this overuse
that breeds drug-resistance.
Here’s how that might happen.
When used properly, antibiotics can help destroy disease-causing bacteria.
But if you take an antibiotic when you have a viral infection like the flu, the drug won’t
affect the viruses making you sick.
Instead, it’ll destroy a wide variety of bacteria in your body, including some of the
“good” bacteria that help you digest food, fight infection, and stay healthy.
Bacteria that are tough enough to survive the drug will have a chance to grow and quickly
multiply after their friends were wiped away.
These drug-resistant strains can then spread to other people and even pass this drug resistance
to other bacteria via transformation, a process that allows bacteria to exchange genetic information.
Even worse, if a person is prescribed antibiotics for two weeks, but stops after a week when
they feel better, the bacteria have an even better chance of having been able to survive
this smaller regiment, and gained some antibiotic resistance.
According to the NIH, some bacterial infections that were treatable for decades are now resistant
to almost every drug, even the newer ones.
Last year, the CDC published a report identifying 18 bacteria and fungi that needed to be monitored
for developing antibiotic resistance, including five bugs described as "urgent threats."
These 5 urgent threats include Candida auris, a drug-resistant fungus that began spreading
among hospital and nursing home patients in the United States in 2015, carbapenem-resistant
acinetobacter, which can cause pneumonia and other infections in hospital ICUs, and an
antibiotic-resistant strain of gonorrhea.
And now brand new superbugs like NDM-1 have emerged that are resistant to almost all known
agents including the most powerful, last line of carbapenem antibiotics.
These organisms are highly resistant and the infections they cause have proven to be extremely
difficult to eradicate.
And the CDC estimates that these new resistant strains cost the US healthcare industry more
than $20 billion a year.
One study found that even after the use of a disinfectant, more than half of hospital
rooms still contained detectable amounts of drug resistant bacteria.
Nurses and doctors even carry these things around, too.
Roughly 5 percent of healthcare workers are colonized with MRSA, a drug resistant bacteria
that kills thousands of people in the US every year.
And the World Health Organization agrees.
Their recent global report paints a grim reality that will only worsen if we are not able implement
effective strategies to curtail antimicrobial resistance.
Common serious infections caused by bacteria that were once treatable like bloodstream
and skin infections, diarrhea, pneumonia, and urinary tract infections, will become
harder to manage, and ultimately fatal.
The CDC warns we need to stop relying only on new antibiotics that are slow to get to
market, and that will only delay these germs before they one day render even these new
antibiotics ineffective.
But the CDC’s report highlighted practices, like more thoughtful use of antibiotics, controlling
existing infections, and improving cleaning and disinfecting practices, that can keep
the germs away and infections from occurring in the first place.
Hopefully, if aggressive strategies are implemented, antibiotics will continue to save lives for
generations to come.
That’s it for this episode of Everything Science.
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