We’ve all heard about the public health crisis that his superbugs, but what exactly does that mean? Are these “bugs” super infectious and super contagious with deadly symptoms? Yes and no. I think the best way to think about it is to make it an interchangeable term with antibiotic resistant bacteria. The most common example that comes to mind is probably MRSA (methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus) and that has certainly become a huge issue in the United States, however there are many other bacteria that are actually even more concerning for our future. All of these superbugs share a common characteristic, they cannot be treated with any of the antibiotics that we currently have available for treatment. Antibiotics are commonly seen as a “cure-all” for many Americans when they get sick, but that’s simply not the case and likely is a huge contributing factor in the development and evolution of these superbugs.
So just how bad is this crisis? It’s pretty bad. Like really bad. So bad we might actually be screwed and not be able to use the current antibiotics we have on many infections sometime in the near future. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal outlines the findings of a 2019 report from the CDC on antibiotic resistant bacteria in the United States. According to this article, the CDC estimates that antibiotic resistant bacteria are responsible for over 35,000 deaths per year and cause more than 3 million infections. The CDC also reports 21 specific organisms that present concerns for US public health, classifying them based on severity from a Watch List to Urgent Threats. Of those 21 organisms, 16 of them are classified as Serious or Urgent Threats. What makes these findings that much more troublesome, is the fact that bacteria are constantly evolving and mutating to develop more and more advantageous traits that help them survive antibiotic treatment. The most likely culprit of the rapid rise of antibiotic resistant bacteria is the overuse of antibiotics in healthcare and in agriculture. This overuse causes greater exposure of bacteria to antibiotics and more severe selective pressure pushing resistant bacteria from being anomalies to the norm.
Another issue facing the healthcare world in regard to superbugs is the lack of development of new antibiotics. Very few new antibiotics have been developed recently and we have been using virtually the same ones for nearly 30 years now. This lack of development of new drugs in combination with rapid evolution of resistant bacteria explain the current issue that we face across the world. We may have “A New Hope” however. According to an article published by Science Daily, a new antibiotic is currently being developed that has a mode of action that is unique from all other antibiotics that we currently employ. This novel drug is not currently available for use as it is still in clinical trials, however those trials and the unique mode of action show promise in its viability for future use. The new antibiotic comes from the glycopeptide family of antibiotics, however they have a unique set of genes that are not related to current mechanisms of resistance to other glycopeptide antibiotics. The researchers developing these new drugs were deliberate in their approach to search for this unique gene set and hypothesized that novel genes could be related to novel mechanisms of antibiotic action. That is exactly what they found. This specific class of antibiotics targets the cell wall just as other antibiotics due, however instead of destroying it, this new class actually prevents its destruction, meaning that the cells cannot undergo replication and division to cause severe infection. In the trials thus far, researchers have been able to prevent drug resistant S. aureus infections in mice, a huge sign for the efficacy of these drugs. While this is encouraging news, we still have to realize the severity of the situation we currently face as a global population. If anything, we should learn from the previously mentioned study and try to apply the same methods they used to other classes of antibiotics to quickly and effectively develop new antibiotics to fight these troubling pathogens. But we also must remember that overuse is the single most important factor that has contributed to our current problem, and we cannot let it continue to be that most important factor.
Keegan's Microbiology Blog 