Superbugs!

Increasing rates of antibiotic resistance poses a major challenge for medical professionals today. A recent article in Medical News Today explained everything there is to know about superbugs. First of all, what is a superbug? A superbug is a germ, such as fungi or bacteria, that has become resistant to whatever is normally used to treat it. As superbugs develop, it will take larger amounts of different and stronger drugs to treat infections caused by these organisms. In the US, these types of infections lead to over 35,000 deaths each year. To prevent the development of superbugs, it is important to use antibiotics only when necessary, and to carefully follow the instructions on the antibiotic’s prescription.

              This article also explained exactly how superbugs come to exist through natural evolution. When a person with an infection takes an antibiotic, the antibiotic kills the most susceptible organisms first, and more resistant organisms survive. These survivors produce more bacteria that are also resistant to the antibiotic, so the infection becomes more difficult to treat. This reasoning explains why it is so important to finish your course of antibiotics, so that even the more resistant bacteria are killed and cannot reproduce to make the infection return with stronger bacteria. Antibiotics are also very prevalent in the farming industry, so bacteria have more opportunities to be exposed to antibiotics and develop resistance. From my perspective, it seems like as long as you go to the doctor quickly when you assume that you have an infection, you should be fine. However, this may not be the case in the future if superbugs develop that cannot be treated with our currently known antibiotics.

              On a more hopeful note, I found another article that explained how a new antibiotic was recently discovered, and it can treat infections that are resistant to all of our current antibiotics. Researchers at MIT discovered this antibiotic using an artificial intelligence program that assessed how effective it would be against E. coli. When this compound was tested in lab after being selected, it was effective against resistant strains of C. difficile, A. baumanii, and Mycobacterium tuberculosis. This drug has been named halicin, which is inspired by a pop culture reference involving AI that I did not understand… While this discovery is very helpful in the medical field, it is only a matter of time until bacteria begin to develop resistance against it, especially if the use of antibiotics continues to increase.