How Superbugs Will Affect Our Health
This is two weeks old, but still interesting. Megan McArdle has an article in The Atlantic about the rise of superbugs and the lack of antibiotic drug approvals to combat bacterial infections.
The first graphic illustrates the rise of antibiotic resistant bugs while the second graphic shows the declining approvals for new antibiotics. HT: David Henderson.
So what difference does it make?
She explains what a world without effective antibiotics would look like:
- Without antibiotics, there would be very little elective surgery. Before sulfa drugs, surgery was a very serious business with a high risk that a patient might die of some complicating infection.
- Without antibiotics, forget organ transplants. The immune suppression would almost certainly be fatal in a pretty short time period. HIV would also be more dangerous.
- Without antibiotics, retirements would get shorter again. Before antibiotics, the average 60 year old who caught pneumonia was more likely than not to die of it than not.
- Without antibiotics, maternal mortality would be a lot higher. So would mortality from abortions, dramatically.
- The severely disabled would have much shorter life spans. Without antibiotics, there would be no way to treat the bed sores, or the lung and urinary tract infections that are common for people with limited sensation or mobility.
- Strep and its evil cousins, scarlet and rheumatic fevers, would once again be a major killer and disabler of children.
Antibiotics were arguably among the first wonder drugs.
In the past, infectious diseases periodically killed off substantial portions of human populations. Because we have intervened in the natural evolution of disease organisms by challenging them with anitbiotics — prompting the development of superbugs — it’s an effort we have to keep up.
Perhaps this poses a solution to the baby boomer retirement crisis.
Whew! I was afraid you were going to say these were going to kill us…
Add this to drug shortages and we’re creating quite a problem for folks who get sick.
Most people don’t understand that you don’t need antibiotics for a cold. I’ve had countless arguments with friends regarding how antibiotics don’t help colds. It’s hard for doctors to stop prescribing them, especially with insistent patients. It’s going to take more outbreaks for patients to change their minds about taking them for minor ailments.
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With the new Super Bug, hospitals and other healthcare institutions need to find ways to reduce the spread of this virus. See attached link for a possible solution:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpzsjL3lfpU
Thanks!
Sem duvida o antibiotico se for bem administrado é uma das maravilhas ,a tecnologia em exames também. Parabens aos que estudam e a pesquisam isso faz a diferença.Tuberculose e tantas outras doenças levavam a óbito pessoas muito cedo hoje temos longevidade graças a medicina e o mais importante qualidade de vida .
Vivemos em uma guerra bacteriológica tudo esta no ar.