Report: Bacteria getting upper hand in antibiotics arms race

Pharmaceutical companies have not been developing newl antibiotics, which tend to be rather unprofitable. There are very few new drugs in development or pending approval. (iStock)

We have to tell their families that we have nothing that we can do for this person with this kind of infection.

We’re accustomed to hearing our era referred to as the Space Age, the Information Age or the Digital Age. It could just as easily be called the Antibiotic Age.

Very few advances in the 20th Century so utterly changed life — and improved quality of life — the way Sir Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin did in 1928.

Antibiotics revolutionized medicine and the world. Bacterial infections, from gonorrhea to pneumonia, could be treated swiftly. An infected cut on a finger was no longer life-threatening. A host of medical treatments and surgeries became possible.

In fact, a lot of medical and public health experts now fear that we’re on the cusp of an unsettling new age … the Post-antibiotic Age.

Some doctors have told science journalist Maryn McKenna that for some infections, we’re already there. Physicians have said to her, “‘We’re already seeing people for whom we have nothing. We have to tell their families that we have nothing that we can do for this person with this kind of infection.’”

“Infections in surgery will become much more common. There was an analysis published recently in the British Medical Journal about what the lack of antibiotics would do to some major procedures. They estimated that one in six hip replacements would result in death.

“Childbirth becomes dangerous. Any kind of injury becomes dangerous.”

Read the full story here: http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/bacteria-getting-upper-hand-in-antibiotics-arms-race-1.2555750