Contents page 1 — 33.000 Europeans die each year from multi-drug resistant pathogens page 2 — antibiotics show how the pharmaceutical market is failing On a read page
coincidence led to one of the greatest discoveries in the history of medicine: in 1928, was the Scottish physician and bacteriologist, Alexander Fleming lied to a fungus in one of his bacteria cultures. Shortly thereafter, the bacteria grew because of the fungi of the Penicillin formed. The first antibiotic was found.
Even if Doctors started until years later, bacterial infections treated with antibiotics, heralded the start of Fleming’s discovery, a new Era. Dozens of antibiotics emerged and a number of diseases lost over the decades, a good part of their horror. Only rarely killed people – otherwise healthy – an erysipelas, tonsillitis, pneumonia.
90 years after Fleming’s discovery, this achievement of modern medicine crumbles. Because bacteria antibiotics are becoming increasingly resistant. Almost 700,000 people in Europe were infected in the year 2015 with multi-resistant germs, two-thirds of them in hospitals. More than 33,000 died of the consequences of such an infection. At least that was estimated a Team from the European center for disease control ECDC. The study is now published in the journal Lancet (Cassini et al., 2018). Just for comparison: The number of deaths is equivalent to the inmate population of around 100 fully occupied Airbus A350. Previous estimates were the assumption of lower case. The European Commission, for example, went from about 25,000 dead.
– Resistant bacteria What is resistance?
bacteria constantly multiply and reproduce your genetic material, your DNA. It comes to natural mutations, i.e. changes of the genetic information. This has consequences for the abilities of the bacterium. One of them is the ability to the effect of intended antibiotic to attenuate or turn off. A bacterium can do it, it is against the medium-resistant: The drug no longer works.
resistance, arise especially in places where many antibiotics in circulation: in clinics, or in factory farms. Because under the constant influence of the antibiotics survive and the strains of bacteria that had developed by chance through Mutation of resistance multiply. In addition, they are able to, the resistance through gene transfer to other bacterial strains to transfer.
