• Question: What do you think is the best way to fight antibiotic resistance?

    Asked by anon-251394 to Delma on 29 Apr 2020.
    • Photo: Delma Childers

      Delma Childers answered on 29 Apr 2020:

      This is a terrific question and one that’s going to require a global effort! One of the most important things we can do to fight resistance is to engage in antibiotic stewardship. This means that GPs need to carefully consider whether their patients will really benefit from antibiotics. It also means that we, as patients, need to finish any course of antibiotics we’re prescribed, even if we feel better. Everyone can play a big role in keeping resistant microbes from emerging.

      In the end, antibiotic resistance is a race between us and microbes. Microbes will likely eventually adapt to whatever new drug we throw at them. What scientists can do is to try to stay ahead of the curve in finding new tools to combat drug resistant organisms. I look at how our immune system recognises and kills these bugs and I’m working on ways to identify new drugs to help this process. Other scientists are trying other out-of-the-box ideas, including using other microbes to help fight drug resistant infections.

Comments

  • Photo: Sophie

    Sophie commented on :

    Excellent question. Antibiotic resistance is a very real problem and it is so important that we all unite to prevent the spread of resistance. The most important way to prevent the increase in resistance is education. Through education we will learn not to ask for antibiotics when we have a virus, such as flu or gastroenteritis (stomach bug). Antibiotics only work on bacteria. Many countries also feed antibiotics to cattle and they are heavily used on fish farms. These antibiotics get into our food chain when we consume these animals, which gives the bacteria in our bodies an advantage. There is selective pressure for them to find ways to survive antibiotics, which means that we then see more resistance.
    More money also needs to be put into research and pharmaceutical companies to find new drugs and alternatives to antibiotics. I hope this helps to answer your question and supports Delma’s response 🙂

  • Photo: Freya

    Freya commented on :

    This is a brilliant question. Delma and Sophie have given great answers already, and I’m going to add just one extra thing: we need to get better at prescribing the right antibiotics when people have an infection.
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    Different antibiotics work in different ways, and most can only kill certain types of bacteria. There is not always time to take a sample of bacteria from an infection and test which antibiotics will kill them, so often doctors make a “best guess” at which antibiotics are likely to help someone, and prescribe those. Most of the time this is fine. But in a lot of cases, it’s not, and people get given antibiotics that don’t kill the bacteria inside them. Or they get given too low a dose of the antibiotics to kill the bacteria. Those antibiotics create an evolutionary pressure inside the person, and in the environment when the person goes to the loo and releases antibiotics into the water system, for any other bacteria around to evolve resistance. Those bacteria might later infect someone, or pass their resistance genes on to infectious bacteria (bacteria love to swap DNA with each other).
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    Sometimes, even when doctors take samples of bacteria and do tests to choose the right antibiotic, it still doesn’t work. This is a real problem for people who get infections as a result of their normal immune defences being weakened – like people who are on a ventilator, or people with diabetes who get infected ulcers on their legs. So again, the person gets given antibiotics which don’t help, and just create that evolutionary pressure for more resistance to evolve. We need to find ways to test bacteria so that we can get better at giving people the right antibiotic, at the right dose.