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https://theconversation.com/we-need-to-change-how-antibiotics-target-bugs-if-we-want-them-to-keep-working-183135>
"While much of our attention during the past few years has been focused on
COVID, a more insidious and more dangerous pandemic has been spreading
unabated. This pandemic concerns antimicrobial resistance, which is when
bacteria evade the antibiotics we use to treat them. You’ve probably heard
these bacteria called “superbugs” in the mainstream press.
A recently published study found that in 2019 around 5 million deaths were
associated with antibiotic resistance, more than twice those due to COVID in
2020.
The two main contributors to the emergence and persistence of antibiotic
resistance are the ways antibiotics work and the ability of bacteria to combat
them.
Bacteria are highly evolved lifeforms that have significant evolutionary
advantages over us. One of these is their doubling time, which, for many of the
common varieties of bacteria that infect us, is only 15 to 40 minutes.
In addition, bacteria grow exponentially, which means the time for one
bacterium to become two, is the same as that for 100 million to become 200
million.
One consequence of this is if we kill 99.99% of bacteria, they can restore
their numbers within a few hours. Importantly, some or all these bacteria may
be resistant to the agent that originally killed most of their ancestors.
This process of bacterial survival is driven by evolution and the Darwinian
principle of natural selection (survival of the fittest), which applies as much
to microorganisms as it does to animals and plants."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
