Past

The world before the invention of antibiotics was much more dangerous. Any infection could lead to death, and it was impossible to dream of complex surgical operations.

Our organisms and the world around are inhabited by bacteria. Most of them are harmless or useful, but some, pathogenic, cause infections. Before the invention of antibiotics, the human body could fight infection only on its own, using the immune system. Because of this, at the beginning

The 20th century was much more difficult: for example, three of ten people infected with pneumonia were dying, and after childbirth five women out of a thousand did not survive. Tuberculosis, whooping cough, gonorrhea and other diseases caused by aggressive bacteria most often led to death. Let it rarely happened, but it was possible to die, just cutting on the paper.

Everything has changed with the discovery of penicillins - antimicrobial drugs that can defeat certain bacteria. The fungus of Basilpenicillin discovered Alexander Fleming in 1928. This happened almost by accident: he left a cup of Petri with Staphylococcus an open window for the night and the next morning he discovered that the fungus had grown in it. It took more than ten years to make the drug from the substance: Fleming himself experimented with it, as well as the scientists of Howard W. Florie and Ernst Chain. The drug Penicillin, created by Florie and Cheyne, became the first antibiotic.

The “antibiotic” literally means “against life”, in this case against microorganisms. There are many varieties of antibiotics: antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal and antiparasical. Some act against many types of organisms, some only against a few. The most common antibiotics are antibacterial. They either stop the reproduction of bacteria so that the immune system itself defeats the remaining bacteria, or destroys them directly.

The fact that in the end bacteria can become resistant to antibiotics were already known then. Fleming understood that evolution was inevitable and that the bacteria would develop, and the more we use penicillin, the faster this will happen. He was afraid that unreasonable use would accelerate this process. The first staphylococcus bacteria, resistant to penicillin, appeared in 1940 even before the drug was launched into mass production. In 1945, Fleming said: “An imprudent person playing with the treatment of penicillin is morally responsible for the death of a person who died from an infection resistant to penicillin. I hope this misfortune can be avoided. "

Over the past 25 years, not a single new type of antibiotic has been invented

How they fought with infection
to antibiotics

The rays of the sun and ultraviolet lamps were used at the beginning of the 20th century. Ultraviolet radiation kills the cells, and therefore doctors left the patient in the sun or under an ultraviolet lamp in the hope that the bacteria would also kill.

Bacteriophages - viruses, attacking bacteria, were especially popular in Eastern Europe. Like antibiotics, they are taken inside or applied to the skin. After the Second World War, the scientists of the Eastern Bloc actively examined bacteriophages because they could not import medicines from the USA and Western Europe.

The method of treatment with serum was invented at the end of the 19th century, Emil Bering received the Nobel Prize for it. The serum consists of antibodies, proteins that find and attack invaded cells. To get serum, doctors implanted antibodies from the blood of horses and other animals infected with bacteria.

Real

Today, the stability of bacteria to antibiotics that Fleming warned about is one of the main problems in medicine and in the world. With the invention of Penicillin, mankind entered the race: we are trying to overtake evolution, opening all new antibiotics while bacteria adapt to the old ones. The antibiotic tetracycline appeared in 1950, the first bacteria with resistance to it-in 1959. MTICILIN in 1960, bacteria resistant to it-in 1962. Vancomitsin-in 1972, and stable bacteria-in 1988. Daptomitsin appeared in 2003, the first signs of resistance to it-already in 2004 and so on.

The fact is that bacteria multiply and develop very quickly. A new generation of bacteria appears every 20 minutes. Therefore, microorganisms are so quickly evolved and adapted to external threats. Moreover, the more often we use this or that antibiotic, the more chances we give bacteria to develop stability to them.

Antibiotics have been talking about resistance to antibiotics for a long time. The regional panic covered the scientific community ten years ago with the spread of staphylococcus resistant to methicillin. The first such bacteria appeared in the 60s, but then there were only a small share. Gradually, MRSA (the so-called this bacterium, Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus) began to spread. In 1974, 2% of staphylococcus in the United States were resistant to methicillin. In 1995-22%. In 2007-already 63%. Now every year in America, 19 thousand people die from MRSA.

Now resistance to antibiotics begins to take a truly apocalyptic scale. We use them all the same - and almost ceased to open new ones. The development of a new antibiotic costs about $ 1 million, and pharmaceutical companies have ceased to do this - it is unprofitable. The new types of antibiotics does not appear, we use old ones, and resistance to them is growing. Moreover, the so -called pancreatic microorganisms, resistant to several types of antibiotics, and sometimes to everyone, began to appear.

In 2009, one of the patients at the Holy Vincent Hospital in New York was infected after surgery with an infection caused by the Klebsiella Pneumoniae bacteria. The bacterium was resistant to all antibiotics. He died 14 days after infection. The British government launched a project to predict resistance to antibiotics: scientists believe that if the situation will develop the same way as today, then by 2050 10 million people a year will die due to stable bacteria.

The saddest thing is that humanity is to blame for this itself. We treated antibiotics extremely inaccurately. Most people do not understand how resistance to antibiotics works and how they should be used. We are constantly treated with them when it is not at all necessary. Many countries where antibiotics can still be bought at a pharmacy without a prescription. Even in Russia, where they are officially sold only by recipe, you can freely buy many of 30 types of antibiotics available in the market. In the United States, 50% of antibiotics in hospitals are prescribed without the need. 45% of doctors in the UK preserve antibiotics, even when they know that they will not work. And finally, animals: 80% of antibiotics sold in the United States are used not in public, but on animals to accelerate their growth, make them thicker and protect them from diseases. As a result, bacteria with resistance to these antibiotics apply to people through animal meat.

One of the last news about antibiotic resistance is just associated with drugs used on animals and plants. In China, bacteria with resistance to the polymixins group were found , and specifically to the antibiotic of colistine. In the treatment of colistine, they use the “last chance” as the drug, that is, they treat the patient when no other drugs are acting. But stability in China was discovered under other circumstances: they used colistine on pigs.

370 million antibiotics packages are sold
In Russia every year, this is the second most popular type of drug

How we use antibiotics today

Any complex surgical surgery does not do without antibiotics. Especially they are needed when transplanting organs: lungs, hearts, kidneys and liver. So that the body does not reject the transplanted organ, patients take antibiotics that temporarily restrain immunity.

Farmers use antibiotics on plants and animals. They make animals thicker and make them grow faster. In Asia, antibiotics are regularly used for growing fish and shrimp to protect them from bacteria that spread in water.

Antibiotics still play a key role in the treatment of infections: from blood poisoning to sepsis, pneumonia, in dentistry and so on.

Future

What does the future look without antibiotics look? What will we lose? You can add everything that is in this text higher: we will not be able to treat infectious diseases. The birth will become dangerous again. We will not be able to transplant the organs. We will not be able to treat cancer - modern methods of treating cancer like chemotherapy are very relied on on antibiotics to restrain human immunity. Any injury will become dangerous, potentially fatal: it does not matter if you got into a car accident or just fell from the stairs. You will have to live much more carefully and follow your every step. We will lose most of the cheap food in the world: meat, fish, fruits will become much more difficult to produce and, as a result, more expensive.

But some scientists believe that we have hope. Resistance to antibiotics in bacteria does not pass without a trace. They have additional genes that have advantages over other - non -resisted - bacteria of the same species. If we do not attack them with an antibiotic, then bacteria without stability will multiply faster, and bacteria will die out with stability. If you alternate antibiotics, then they will work more efficiently. Let's say we use one type of antibiotics for several years, and then, when bacteria has stability to them, we switch to another.

Others, however, are sure that there is no hope. We have already lost in the war against stability - and the future without antibiotics is inevitable. We can only slow down his parish to find alternatives to antibiotics in all areas. To do this, slow down the spread of antibiotic resistance. Firstly, to conduct restrictions on the use of antibiotics in agriculture. First of all, this applies to the United States: in many countries, such restrictions are already valid (say, in Holland, Denmark and Norway, prohibitions on the use of antibiotics are very stringent), while in America they are afraid to tighten control. Secondly, it is necessary to create conditions under which pharmaceutical companies will again deal with the study of new antibiotics. For example, make the patents for drugs last longer, or weaken the requirements for clinical studies.

One way or another, all this will only delay the inevitable, but humanity is ready to develop. Only 100 years ago we lived without penicillin and antibiotics - and opened them. Now scientists are looking for the most incredible alternatives to antibiotics from the use of predatory microbes to microscopic doses of metals, which have long been known that they cope with microorganisms perfectly. Perhaps by 2050 there will be something that will completely cancel the need for antibiotics.

700 thousand people
per year dies due to bacteria, stable
to antibiotics

What alternatives can appear to antibiotics

CRISPR technology (about which we wrote ,
In connection with the story of the genetic modification of the human embryo) it can be used against bacteria: scientists turn the protective system of the bacteria themselves against
They themselves make them self -destruct.

Predatory bacteria. Some bacteria can help cope with the infection because they feed on other bacteria. One of these species, Bdellovibrio Bacteriovorus, is in the soil. Organisms of this species are attached to other bacteria and multiply with their help, destroying the victim.

Antimicrobial peptides. Many organisms - from plants and animals to fungi - produce peptides, molecules that destroy bacteria. Peptides of amphibians and reptiles, which are especially well protected by infections, can help create new drugs.

Images Via Gabrielle de Coster , Monique Bröring , Shutterstock , Wikipedia

Scientists are increasingly saying that there is a “plain age”, when the most common antibiotics stop working. Bacteria evolve And they become immune to drugs. Look at Me explains how this happened and what will happen to humanity further.

What will the world be without antibiotics