WHO: Bacteria that cause dangerous infections have become very resistant to drugs

High levels of durability in drugs in bacteria that often cause blood infections in hospitals made their appearance the first year of the pandemicas shown by the data of a 2020 report covering 87 countries and released by World Health Organization (WHERE).

Concern about these pathogens, known as superbugs, being resistant to existing drugs is not new.

Prolonged overuse and/or misuse of existing treatments, especially antibiotics, has helped microbes become resistant to many treatments, while information on replacement treatments that are under development is limited.

The WHO report showed levels of higher than 50% resistance in bacteria that commonly cause life-threatening blood infections in hospitals, such as Klebsiella pneumoniae and Acinetobacter spp.

These infections often require “last resort” antibiotics for treatment, that is, drugs used when all other antibiotics have failed.

About 8% of blood infections caused by the bacterium Klebsiella pneumoniae have become resistant to a vital group of “last resort” drugs called carbapenems, the report said.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) rates remain very high, but “last resort” antibiotics are just beginning to lose their effectiveness, Dr. Carmen Pessoa-Silva, head of the Global Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System, told a press conference.

The message of hope, she said, is that “we have a very small window of opportunity … to deal with the threat.”

Although there is a concerted effort to curb the rampant use of antibiotics, the pace of new research remains unsatisfactory.

The effort, cost and time required to get an antibiotic approved and the limited return on investment have discouraged drug makers as treatments must be low cost and designed to be used as little as possible to limit antibiotic resistance. medicines.

As a result, the lion’s share of antibiotic development is confined to a few laboratories of small biopharmaceutical companies as the majority of the larger ones in this space are focused on more profitable markets.

Only a handful of big drug companies remain in the game — among them GSK and Merck — from more than 20 in the 1980s.

A landmark global analysis published earlier this year found that more than 1.2 million people died in 2018 from infections with antibiotic-resistant bacteria, making AMR the leading cause of death worldwide, more than HIV/AIDS or malaria.

“Political commitment (on AMR) should now be urgently turned into ambitious action,” says Thomas Queny, the director-general of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations.

The authors of the WHO report said more research is needed to identify the reasons for AMR in the period examined in the report and to what extent it (AMR) is linked to the increased use of antibiotics during the pandemic.

AMR rates also remain difficult to interpret because of insufficient testing and limited laboratory capacity, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, the report’s authors point out.

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