Antimicrobial Resistance: Can We Keep the Pace?

Since the origin of life a good bunch of million years ago, the story of host-pathogens interactions has been driven by the co-evolution of virulence factors among pathogens to counteract the improvement of immune systems in the hosts. That is, until we humans decided to interfere…

The advent of antibiotics in the late 1880s and its subsequent massive use to treat bacterial infections has prompted the awakening of a parallel co-evolution, one that is driven by antibiotic pressure and involves the emergence of antibiotic resistance mechanisms on the bacterial side together with the development of novel antimicrobial drugs to circumvent resistance on the human side. Unfortunately, this race we are about to lose!

The continuous abuse and misuse of antibiotics over the last decades combined with the extraordinary adaptive nature of microbes has forced the rise of multi-drug resistant (MDR), extensively–drug resistant (XDR) and even pan-drug resistant (PDR) bacteria, namely bacterial strains resistant to all available drugs. On the other hand, the unfavourable cost-to-profit ratio of developing an antibacterial agent has dramatically decreased the number of novel antibiotics that are put into the pipeline, leaving physicians with none or just a few limited options to treat infections caused by such pathogens, eventually resulting in a great increase in morbidity and mortality.

In addition, the annual economic burden associated with the treatment of antibiotic-resistant infections has been estimated between $21 and $34 billion in the US only. The rise of antibiotic resistance, therefore, is not only a public health concern but also a serious economic issue.

We have to accept this is a battle we cannot win, but we can do our best to keep the pace of evolution. Strategies to fix the current situation should be aimed at reducing the overall pressure of antibiotic exposure, enhancing antimicrobial resistance surveillance and control measures and promoting the development of novel therapeutic strategies, both by speeding up the process of antimicrobial approval and supporting antimicrobial research.

The forthcoming meeting organized by B-Debate and ISGlobal, the 5th-7th of November in Barcelona, gathers the main stakeholders involved in the prevention and treatment of antimicrobial resistance and infectious diseases (i.e. public health authorities, regulatory agencies, pharmaceutical companies and renowned scientists) in an attempt to provide a suitable framework to analyse the current challenges of antimicrobial resistance, address the market failure of antibiotic development and come up with potential interventions.

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B·Debate: The Global Threat of the Antimicrobial Resistance