The development of new antimicrobial drugs is not financially attractive to pharmaceutical corporations, said Sally Davies.
Antimicrobial resistance could claim 40 million lives by 2050 if left unchecked, the UK’s special envoy for antimicrobial resistance and former chief medical officer for England, Sally Davies, told the Observer on Sunday.
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) occurs when bacteria, viruses and other types of germs become stronger than the drugs used to treat them, creating so-called “superbacteria”. As a result, specific infections become difficult or impossible to treat.
Speaking to the Observer, Davies described Antimicrobial resistance as a growing “antibiotic emergency” that threatens routine medical procedures such as surgery and childbirth, and could be life-threatening.
Antimicrobial resistance is responsible for approximately one million deaths a year, but that number is expected to double by 2050, according to Davies. Older populations are particularly vulnerable, and mortality rates for people over 70 have increased 80% since 1990, he added.
Despite efforts to limit antibiotic prescribing and misuse, around 70% of all existing antibiotics are used in livestock globally, creating reservoirs of resistant bacteria.
“Basically, we are throwing antibiotics at cows, chickens and sheep as cheap alternatives to giving them growth promoters or prophylactics to prevent the spread of disease.” Davies said. “If you have intensive agriculture that uses a lot of antibiotics or a busy hospital that has a poor sewage system, resistant bacteria can reach the waterways.”
The bacteria evolve rapidly, multiplying every 20 minutes, and can travel through wind and rain, further complicating their containment. “They also mutate a lot, and if they do so in the presence of antibiotics and that mutation protects them, these strains will multiply,” Davies explained to the Observer.
“This is how pernicious this problem has become.” he said, emphasizing that the dangerous characteristics of AMR require both the careful use of existing antibiotics and the development of new ones.
However, developing new antibiotics is not financially attractive for pharmaceutical companies, Davies explained, noting that blood pressure or cancer drugs, taken daily or over long periods, are much more profitable.
Penicillin, discovered in the late 1920s, dramatically extended human lifespan by up to 30 years by counteracting most bacterial infections, but all that progress could now be in jeopardy.
Antibiotic-resistant infections could kill more than 39 million people worldwide over the next 25 years, and another 169 million are expected to die from related causes, according to a study published in the medical journal The Lancet in September. German doctors also warn that the world risks returning to the period before the discovery of penicillin, Bild reported in October.
The medical industry has been slow to develop new antibiotics because the research is too long and expensive, while the benefits are too low, according to Professor Yvonne Mast, a microbiologist and researcher at the Leibniz Institute in Braunschweig. Since 2017, only 13 new drugs have been approved, but only two represent a new chemical class and can be classified as innovative. according to the World Health Organization.
