Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) refers to the capability of microorganisms to survive the applications of various drugs, chemicals, and other treatments intended to kill them. This is particularly problematic in the case of antibiotic resistance, in which antibiotics lose their efficacy for curing life-threatening infections because the responsible bacterial pathogens have acquired antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). Earlier this year, The Lancet published a comprehensive retrospective analysis of available data from 2019 on 23 bacterial pathogens and 88 pathogen-drug combinations across 204 countries and territories. They concluded that 4.95 million deaths globally were associated with bacterial AMR. To put this in perspective, the WHO estimates that an excess of 3.0 million deaths were associated with COVID-19 in 2020. Steadily, over the past decades, new ARG variants have continued to emerge and spread and various antibiotics have continued to lose their efficacy. Thus, AMR is increasingly being referred to as the "slow pandemic."
展开▼
