Drug resistance and superbugs
1. Synopsis
Penicillin as a world war with radar, atomic bombs, polyethylene film and jet aircraft named important invention, penicillin is the earliest antibiotic discovered by mankind, before the discovery of penicillin, people are helpless against bacterial infections, patients infected by bacteria face death at any time, and since the emergence of antibiotics, the case fatality rate of pneumonia has dropped to less than 5%. Antibiotics are not only widely used in the treatment of bacterial infectious diseases, but also in the prevention and treatment of infections in tumor radiotherapy and chemotherapy. In addition, organ transplantation, joint replacement, heart surgery are inseparable from the use of antibiotics.
Today we live in an era of antibiotics, and we need to thank one person in particular, that is, Academician Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin. It was he who ushered in an era when many deadly infectious diseases became curable, and people stopped talking about pneumonia discoloration.
However, just as the discovery of penicillin went unnoticed for 10 years after it was published in 1929, the warnings issued by Academician Fleming in his Nobel Prize-winning speech in 1945 were also not taken seriously for a long time. It's just that – antibiotic resistance (superbugs)! Today it has become a global crisis.
2. Tiger! tiger! tiger!
In his Nobel-winning speech, Fleming warned of the possible harms of antibiotic abuse. He mentioned that if bacteria are not exposed to sufficient concentrations of penicillin in the laboratory, bacteria will not only not be killed but will also develop resistance to penicillin.
The Staphylococcus aureus, which was initially easily killed by penicillin, was already very resistant
3. Here comes the crisis
In 1929 Fleming discovered penicillin;
Penicillin was first used in the 1940s;
Emergence of penicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in the mid-1940s;
Early penicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus became endemic in the early 1950s;
Methicillin was first used in the late 1950s;
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) first appeared in the 1960s;
MRSA was discovered in the United States in the late 1960s;
The first appearance of toxic shock syndrome due to MRSA in the 1980s;
Community-acquired MRSA (CA-MRSA) first appeared in the 1990s;
CA-MRSA appeared in the United States in the late 1990s;
Vancomycin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (VRSA) appeared in the 2000s.
The number of patients who died of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection in the United States in 2005 was much higher than the number of people who died from asthma, almost the same number of patients who died from Parkinson's disease, and very close to the number of people who died of leukemia that year.
4. No medicine is available
The World Health Organization has issued a list of antibiotics urgently needed
In the list of bacteria that urgently need new antibiotics published by the World Health Organization, MRSA only ranks 2nd in category 2 priorities (very important). Ranked "extremely important" before MRSA were gram-stained negative bacilli with 3 carbapenem-resistant drugs, and 1st was carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii (CRAB). Crab is a more serious global superbug, found in hospitals in any country except the six other continents of Antarctica, and it is a nightmare for intensive care units. China is the hardest hit area. The separation rate of CRAB has increased from 30.1% in 2006 to 75.6% in 2018.
Antibiotic development attracts less than 5% of global venture capital (is it time to think of TED's comparison of the cost of vaccines and nuclear submarines?). ）
However, the development of antibiotics in such a severe form attracts less than 5% of global venture capital, and in 2011 there were only 17 antibiotics under research worldwide, compared with only 2 for negative bacteria. Humanity will face no medicine available, and superbugs will become the "terminators" of humanity.
Superbugs are predicted to kill 10 million people a year by 2050, surpassing the number of deaths caused by cancer each year.