Some microbes are developing resistance to our antibiotics.
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The number of global deaths directly attributable to antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections is projected to increase from 1.27 million per year in 2019 to 1.91 million per year by 2050. Antibiotic resistance is expected to kill a total of 39 million people between now and 2050, but more than a third of those could be prevented if we take action.
Resistance occurs when microbes evolve the ability to survive drugs that were once lethal, so that they can no longer treat infections. As antibiotics become more widely used in agriculture and medicine, more and more microbes are becoming resistant and spreading worldwide, but the full scale of the problem is unclear.
To solve this Eveul The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) in Seattle and her colleagues attempted to estimate the annual number of deaths due to antibiotic resistance from 1990 to 2021. “Our estimates are based on more than 500 million records,” Wool says. “We cover a lot of geographic and temporal range.”
While the overall number of deaths from this is increasing, the team found that the number of deaths in young children is decreasing as a result of vaccinations and improved medical care. Between 1990 and 2021, deaths from antibiotic resistance fell by more than 50% in children under 5, but increased by more than 80% in adults over 70.
Overall, the number of deaths attributed to antibiotic resistance increased from 1.06 million in 1990 to 1.27 million in 2019, then decreased to 1.14 million in 2021, the team concluded. However, the declines in 2020 and 2021 are likely a temporary slowdown as other types of infections also declined due to COVID-19 control measures, rather than a sustained improvement in resistance.
The study’s “most likely” scenario for the coming decades sees antibiotic-resistant deaths rising to 1.91 million annually by 2050. In a scenario where new antibiotics are developed for the most problematic bacteria, 11 million deaths would be prevented between now and midcentury. In a “better care” scenario, where more people have access to good health care, even more deaths would be prevented.
The annual death toll of 1.91 million is far lower than the projected 10 million by 2050. 2016 Review. That projection was based on less reliable estimates and included concerns about resistance to non-antibiotic drugs for diseases such as HIV and malaria, the team said. Mohsen NagabiAlso at IHME.
The new study is said to be more thorough than previous studies. Marieke de Kraker It was conducted at the University Hospital of Geneva in Switzerland, but it still has some major limitations. For example, it assumes that the risk of death from antibiotic-resistant infections is the same worldwide, which is not true. “If basic health infrastructure is limited, drug-resistant infections do not necessarily lead to more deaths than drug-resistant infections,” says de Kraker.
She is also skeptical of the team’s predictions. “I think it’s very unreliable to predict trends in antibiotic resistance,” says de Kraker. Drug-resistant microbes can appear or disappear suddenly without experts fully understanding the underlying mechanisms, and black swan events that are impossible to predict often occur, she says.
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