What will happen to us if antibiotics stop working?
THE WORLD BEFORE THE INVENTION OF ANTIBIOTICS WERE MUCH DANGER. Any infection could be fatal, and complex surgical operations could not even be dreamed of. Scientists are increasingly saying that the “post-antibiotic age” is approaching when the most common antibiotics stop working. Bacteria evolve and become immune to drugs. We tell how it happened and what will happen to humanity next.
Past
Bacteria inhabit our organisms and the world around us. Most of them are harmless or helpful, but some pathogens cause infections. Before the invention of antibiotics, the human body could fight infection only on its own, with the help of the immune system. Because of this, life at the beginning of the 20th century was much more difficult: for example, three out of ten people infected with pneumonia died, and five women out of a thousand did not survive after giving birth. Tuberculosis, whooping cough, gonorrhea and other diseases caused by invasive bacteria most often lead to death. Let it happen rarely, but you could die just by cutting yourself on paper.
Everything has changed with the discovery of penicillins - antimicrobial drugs that can defeat certain bacteria. The fungus benzylpenicillin was discovered in 1928 by Alexander Fleming. This happened almost by accident: he left the Petri dish with staphylococcus for the night in the laboratory with the window open and found out the next morning that a fungus had grown in it. It took more than ten years to make a drug a substance: Fleming himself experimented on it, as well as scientists Howard W. Flory and Ernst Chain. Penicillin, created by Flory and Chen, became the first antibiotic.
"Antibiotic" literally means "against life" - in this case against microorganisms. There are many types of antibiotics: antibacterial, antiviral, anti-fungal and anti-parasitic. Some act against many kinds of organisms, some only against a few. The most common antibiotics are antibacterial. They either stop the multiplication of bacteria, so that the immune system itself defeats the remaining ones, or destroys them directly.
The fact that bacteria could eventually become resistant to antibiotics was already known then. Fleming understood that evolution is inevitable and that bacteria will develop: the more we use penicillin, the faster it will happen. He feared that unwise use would speed up the process. The first staphylococcal bacteria resistant to penicillin appeared in 1940, even before the drug was launched into mass production. In 1945, Fleming said: "An imprudent person playing with penicillin therapy is morally responsible for the death of a person who died from a penicillin-resistant infection. I hope this disaster can be avoided."
The sun's rays and ultraviolet lamps used at the beginning of the XX century. Ultraviolet radiation kills cells, and therefore doctors left the patient in the sun or under an ultraviolet lamp in the hope that the bacteria will also kill.
Bacteriophages - viruses attacking the bacteria, were especially popular in Eastern Europe. Like antibiotics, they are taken by mouth or applied to the skin. After World War II, scientists from the Eastern Bloc actively investigated bacteriophages because they could not import drugs from the United States and Western Europe.
The serum treatment method was invented at the end of the 19th century; Emil Bering received the Nobel Prize for it. Serum consists of antibodies, proteins, which are found and attacked invading cells. To get the serum, doctors implanted humans with antibodies from the blood of horses and other animals infected with bacteria.
The present
Today, antibiotic resistance of bacteria, which Fleming warned about, is one of the main problems in medicine and in the world. With the invention of penicillin, humanity entered the race: we are trying to outrun evolution, discovering new antibiotics, while the bacteria are adapting to the old ones. The antibiotic tetracycline appeared in 1950, the first bacteria with resistance to it - in 1959. Methicillin - in 1960, bacteria resistant to it - in 1962. Vancomycin - in 1972, and resistant bacteria - in 1988. Daptomycin appeared in 2003, the first signs of resistance to it — as early as 2004, and so on. The fact is that bacteria multiply and develop very quickly. A new generation of bacteria appears every 20 minutes, so microorganisms evolve so quickly and adapt to external threats. Moreover, the more often we use one or another antibiotic, the more chances we give bacteria to develop resistance to them.
Antibiotic resistance has been talked about for a long time. A serious panic swept the scientific community ten years ago with the spread of methicillin-resistant staph. The first such bacteria appeared in the 60s, but then they were only a small fraction. Gradually MRSA (so called this bacterium, Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) began to spread. In 1974, 2% of those infected with staphylococcus in the United States were resistant to methicillin, in 1995 - 22%, and in 2007 - already 63%. Now every year in America, 19 thousand people die from MRSA.
Now antibiotic resistance begins to take on a truly apocalyptic scale. We use them all as much - and almost ceased to open new ones. The development of a new antibiotic costs about 1 million dollars, and pharmaceutical companies have ceased to engage in this - it is unprofitable. New types of antibiotics do not appear, we use the old ones, and resistance to them is growing. Moreover, so-called pan-resistant microorganisms began to appear, resistant to several types of antibiotics, and sometimes to all.
In 2009, one of the patients at St. Vincent's Hospital in New York contracted an infection caused by the Klebsiella pneumoniae bacteria after surgery. The bacterium was resistant to all antibiotics. He died 14 days after infection. The British government launched a project to predict antibiotic resistance: scientists believe that if the situation develops in the same way as today, by 2050, 10 million people a year will die due to resistant bacteria.
The saddest thing is that humanity is to blame for this. We treated antibiotics extremely carelessly. Most people do not understand how antibiotic resistance works and how they should be used. We are constantly treated for them when it is not needed at all. There are many countries where antibiotics can still be bought at a pharmacy without a prescription. Even in Russia, where they are officially sold only by prescription, you can freely buy many of the 30 types of antibiotics available on the market. In the US, 50% of antibiotics in hospitals are prescribed unnecessarily. 45% of doctors in the UK prescribe antibiotics, even when they know that they will not work. And finally, animals: 80% of antibiotics sold in the United States are used not on humans, but on animals in order to accelerate their growth, make them thicker and protect against diseases. As a result, bacteria resistant to these antibiotics spread to humans through animal meat.
One of the latest news on antibiotic resistance is related to drugs used on animals and plants. In China, bacteria have been found that are resistant to the group of polymyxins, and specifically to the antibiotic colistin. In the treatment of colistin is used as a "last chance" drug, that is, they are treating the patient when no other drugs are already acting. But resistance in China was discovered under other circumstances: they used colistin on pigs.
Any complex surgery is not complete without antibiotics. Especially they are needed for the transplantation of organs: lungs, heart, kidneys and liver. To prevent the body from rejecting the transplanted organ, patients take antibiotics that temporarily inhibit immunity.
Farmers use antibiotics on plants and animals. They make animals fatter and make them grow faster. In Asia, antibiotics are regularly used to grow fish and shrimp to protect them from bacteria that spread in the water.
Antibiotics still play a key role in the treatment of infections: from blood poisoning to sepsis, pneumonia, in dentistry, and so on.
Future
What does the future look like without antibiotics? What will we lose? You can add all that is in this text above: we will not be able to cure infectious diseases. Childbirth will again become dangerous. We will not be able to transplant organs. We can’t cure cancer: modern cancer treatments like chemotherapy rely heavily on antibiotics to keep a person’s immune system in check. Any injury will become dangerous, potentially fatal - no matter if you were involved in a car accident or just fell down the stairs. You will have to live much more carefully and monitor your every step. We will lose most of the cheap food in the world: meat, fish, fruit will become much more difficult to produce and, as a result, more expensive.
But some scientists believe that we have hope. Resistance to antibiotics in bacteria does not pass without a trace. They have additional genes that give them advantages over other - non-resistant - bacteria of the same species. If we do not attack them with an antibiotic, then bacteria without resistance will multiply faster, and bacteria with resistance will die out. If you alternate antibiotics, they will work more efficiently. Let's say we use one type of antibiotics for several years, and then, when bacteria appear to be resistant to them, we switch to another.
Others, however, believe that there is no hope. We have already lost the war against sustainability — and a future without antibiotics is inevitable. We can only slow down his arrival in order to find alternatives to antibiotics in all areas. To do this, slow down the spread of antibiotic resistance. First, to lead restrictions on the use of antibiotics in agriculture. First of all, it concerns the USA: in many countries, such restrictions are already in place (say, in the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway, bans on the use of antibiotics are very tough), in America, they are afraid of tightening control. Secondly, it is necessary to create conditions under which pharmaceutical companies will again take up the study of new antibiotics. For example, to make drug patents last longer, or to weaken the requirements for clinical trials.
One way or another, all this will only delay the inevitable, but humanity is ready to develop. Just a hundred years ago, we lived without penicillin and antibiotics - and discovered them. Now scientists are looking for the most incredible alternatives to antibiotics, from the use of predatory microbes to microscopic doses of metals, which have long been known to do an excellent job with microorganisms. Perhaps by 2050, there will be something that would completely eliminate the need for antibiotics.
CRISPR technology can be used against bacteria: scientists turn the protective system of the bacteria themselves against them and cause them to self-destruct.
Predatory bacteria. Some bacteria can help cope with the infection because they feed on other bacteria. One of these species, Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus, is in the soil. Organisms of this species attach to other bacteria and multiply with their help, destroying the victim.
Antimicrobial peptides. Many organisms - from plants and animals to fungi - produce peptides, molecules that destroy bacteria. Peptides of amphibians and reptiles, which are particularly well protected from infections, can help create new drugs.
Material was first published on Look At Me
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