How the Longitude Prize Challenge can help preserve the cornerstone of modern medical care – antibiotics
The Department of Health have said that the use of antibiotics has a wider cost to society that is not faced by the individual who receives them or practitioner who prescribes them. This cost is due to resistance to antibiotics, which is predicted to rise over time without intervention. This may lead to a situation where multi-drug-resistant microbes increase, so that regular surgery and other medical procedures, such as chemotherapy, carry a substantial risk of death. Few new drugs are coming onto the market that would be able to treat these bacteria. As a result, antibiotics are likely to be overused and intervention is necessary to ensure that these external costs and risks to society of increased resistance are taken into account by practitioners and individuals.
The Department of Health are so concerned that they have developed an antimicrobial resistance strategy. The objective of the strategy is to reduce the use of antibiotics where it is safe and appropriate to do so, in order to reduce current and future prevalence of antimicrobial resistance. This will be achieved by:
· Improving infection prevention and control to reduce the need for antibiotics in the first place;
· Promoting antibiotic stewardship, in order to preserve currently effective therapies, focussing on the appropriate use of these drugs (right drug, dose, duration every time);
· Improving knowledge on resistance mechanisms;
· Facilitating the development of new drugs, vaccines and diagnostics
The World Health Organization estimates that antibiotics treatments add an average of 20 years to all of our lives. But in the 80 years since the discovery of penicillin, our overuse of antibiotics has put pressure on bacteria to evolve resistance, leading to the emergence of untreatable superbugs that threaten the basis of modern medicine.
Clinicians often prescribe broad spectrum antibiotics to sick patients because doctors have to act quickly on imperfect information. These methods put selective pressure on microbes to evolve resistance to antibiotics.
Radical change is needed to address the global problem of growing anti-microbial resistance, to ensure a health care system that can sustainably control and treat infections.
We cannot outpace microbial evolution. A new broad-spectrum antibiotic, if applied with current methods, would eventually meet new forms of resistance. The overall solution involves a long-term path towards a more intelligent use of antibiotics enabling a future of more effective prevention, targeted treatments and smart clinical decision support systems.
If Antibiotics wins the vote, the challenge for Longitude Prize 2014 will be set to create a cheap, accurate, rapid, and easy-to-use test for bacterial infections that will allow doctors and nurses all over the world to better target their treatments, administering the right antibiotics at the right time.
Point-of-care test kits would allow more targeted use of antibiotics, and an overall reduction in misdiagnosis and prescription. This will ensure that the antibiotics we have now will be effective for longer and we can continue to control infections during routine and major procedures.
MRSA Action UK’s view is that the investment in making an affordable rapid test available to healthcare providers in any healthcare setting will not only help to target any infection with the correct antibiotic, but could also serve as a catalyst for change in the science involved in the diagnosis and identification of ever evolving strains of resistant bacteria. There are some particularly virulent strains in our healthcare environment; some have proven to be untreatable, particularly with some multi-resistant strains of gram negative bacteria.
The ability to identify potential outbreaks will need to be coupled with strategies to treat patients safely without spreading and adding to the pools of multi-drug resistant strains. If we can identify and control outbreaks this will help conserve our antibiotics.
Understanding how we share antibiotic resistance with animals is important. Strategies for curbing the use of antibiotics in animals that we eat and understanding the impact this can have has to be learned and acted on. Many of the antibiotics we use to treat our infections are also used for animals, a rapid test can potentially be used for animals and humans. A global ‘One-Health’ approach which spans people, animals, agriculture and the wider environment has to be taken.
To vote for #Antibiotics, and preserve the cornerstone of modern medicine visit:
http://www.longitudeprize.org/challenge/antibiotics
For more information on the UK 5 Year Antimicrobial Resistance Strategy visit:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-5-year-antimicrobial-resistance-strategy-2013-to-2018
Derek Butler
Chair
MRSA Action UK
http://mrsaactionuk.net
email: derek.j.butler@mrsaactionuk.net
telephone: 07762 741114
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