Driving Resistance

Without a doubt, antibiotics are one of the greatest advancements ever in medicine. They are used to fight hundreds of infections caused by bacteria in humans and animals. It seems like nothing can go wrong here, right? Wrong. Overprescribing antibiotics has caused bacteria to develop in ways that do not respond to treatment. The bacteria itself becomes antibiotic-resistant making infections harder to treat than those caused by non-resistant bacteria. With rising antibiotic-resistance in our world we have seen increased mortality, higher medical costs, and prolonged hospital stays (WHO, Antibiotic resistance 2020). The issue of antibiotic-resistance is on the forefront of researchers minds because we are discovering new resistance mechanisms that are spreading globally.

Aastha Chokshi and her colleagues examined key political and socioeconomic factors that may drive antibiotic-resistance in the present-day world. I found this study incredibly interesting because these researchers studied the differences in health-care treatment, availability, and quality across developed and developing countries. After studying several areas from different areas across the world, Chokshi concluded that developing countries contribute to antibiotic-resistance in a unique way when compared to developed countries. They found that some main contributors to antibiotic-resistance in developing countries include low quality of available antibiotics, clinical misuse, ease of availability, and poor surveillance of drug use. An overlap between developing and developed countries was seen in issues such as self-medication and a lack of regulation while taking antibiotics. I found this study so captivating because although I knew the size and severity of the antibiotic-resistance issue, I had never considered socioeconomic factors and the ways in which the play into the progression of resistance.

As I’m sure we’ve heard before, COVID-19 is a new infectious disease that has swept the globe causing us to currently be experiencing this pandemic. Interestingly enough, antibiotic/antimicrobial resistance is also considered a pandemic but in its own nature with very slow progression and established knowledge on this topic. There is a multitude of road-blocks in terms of stopping these two pandemics. So far, the treatment of COVID-19 has involved the trials of old, new, and even combined forms of medicines already used to treat other infections and with this being said we are very unsure of how this virus reacts to these medications. According to Robby Niewlaat and his colleagues, there is an overlap between the most prevalent SARS-CoV-2 symptoms and seen following the overuse of antibiotics. This issue could slow the treatment of COVID-19 and may only drive antimicrobial-resistance further. I look forward to future research involving the interactions of the Coronavirus and antibiotic-resistance because a strong overlap such as this could one day lead to answers regarding the slowing of the progression of this virus and maybe one day help us find a treatment.