how are we fighting antibiotic resistant bacteria and what will we do when our antibiotics will no longer have effect?
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In human medicine, [antimicrobial stewardship programs](https://www.ahrq.gov/topics/antimicrobial-stewardship.html) are required in U.S. hospitals to ensure that we’re using antibiotics wisely. It’s only one part of the picture, but often pharmacists will consult with the rest of the team if they’re not sure if an antibiotic is really needed.
There’s a decent amount of research being done in the academic space into what are called anti microbial peptides (AMPs). These AMPs are essentially very small proteins (though much larger than antibiotics). They have the same problem of bacteria gaining resistance to them, though it is much much easier to discover new AMPs than antibiotics to help avoid that, and they have the capacity to be more bacterial strain specific. At the current moment they are a) more expensive than antibiotics to make and b) harder to deliver as a pill, so are really only being studied at universities, and not by any major pharmaceutical companies. But if we get to the point where there are no antibiotics that work, I’d imagine we’d switch to AMPs and at least greatly extend the time that we can effectively kill bacteria with drugs.
I am doing my PhD in making a new antibiotic!
That kind of gives one answer – we make antibiotics that have a new mode of action that the bacteria have not developed a resistance to.
Some research is going on to develop drugs that disable the resistance mechanism that bacteria have developed – a clinically used example is clavulinic acid thats disables the enzymes that would destroy the antibiotic amoxicillin.
Other research is going into bacteriophages, viruses that are specialised to only kill bacteria, these can be so specific that only certain species of bacteria are targeted which is much better than the carpet bombing approach of the more commonly used broad spectrum antibiotics. The idea is that you would be given a cocktail of bacteriophages that kill all the pathogens that you might have for a particular infection. The disadvantage of these is that they might not be able to get to certain parts of the body like the brain as, compared to an antibiotic molecule, viruses are huge and might not get past the blood brain barrier.
Lots of research is going into tracking resistance genes and using that information to tell doctors what antibiotic will most likely work in their geographical area.
I’ll leave it there otherwise I’ll end up writing a whole essay – feel free to ask me any questions though!
Hey there!
Imagine you’re playing a game of hide and seek. The person who’s “it” is like an antibiotic, and the people hiding are like bacteria. Now, some of these bacteria are really good at hiding (these are the antibiotic-resistant ones). They’ve figured out all the best hiding spots and tricks to avoid being found.
Right now, scientists are trying to find new ways to seek out these tricky bacteria. They’re developing new antibiotics, or “seekers”, that can find the bacteria in their new hiding spots. They’re also trying to use other methods, like using good bacteria to fight the bad ones, or finding ways to stop the bad bacteria from growing.
But what if all our antibiotics stop working? Well, that would be like playing a game of hide and seek where everyone is really good at hiding. It would be much harder to win the game. That’s why it’s so important that we use antibiotics responsibly and only when we really need them. It’s like saving our best seekers for when the game gets really tough.
So, in short, we’re fighting antibiotic-resistant bacteria by developing new antibiotics and finding new ways to stop bacteria. And we’re trying to prevent a future where our antibiotics don’t work by using them responsibly. It’s a big challenge, but scientists all over the world are working on it!
Don’t think of it like a game of war, think of it like a game of chess. They rotate out what works as the bacteria evolve. It’s kinda like how diseases usually get weaker as they become more transmissible
You fight antibiotic resistant bacteria with more antibiotics.
Theres well over 100 antibiotics that are readily available. Beyond that there are reserve antibiotics. Their side effects are worse than regular antibiotics‘ so they are only used when regular ones fail.
Also new antibiotics can and are found. Cells are really complex chemical machines and there‘s a massive amount of ways to disturb that. For an antibiotic you need to find a chemical that disturbs some function of the bacterium to a point that it can no longer reproduce. The chalanging part is finding something that also doesn‘t hurt human cells. If bacteria become resistant to more and more antobiotics new ones will be found.
And even if no new safe antibiotics are found there is also phagptherapy. Bacteriophages are viruses that specifically attack certain bacteria and completely ignore human cells. By infecting a human with those you can treat a bacterial infections. Antibiotics are widely considered safer, and combined with their variety and availability explains why we use them more often than phagotherapy
Develop new non-antibiotic methods of eliminating bacteria. One area of research I’ve seen involves mechanically disrupting bacteria cell membranes. Mlike imagine bullets puncturing holes in the membranes. These drugs dont use the same mechanisms as antibiotics so they bypass the issue of resistance entirely.
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