Multifaceted approach to combat Antimicrobial Resistance

As we know some of the species of animals are endanger as there is increase in their declining rate and decrease in the survival rate. The same is true for antibiotics also, as there is rise of antimicrobial resistance and decline in development of new antibiotics. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has become a major obstacle to the treatment of infectious diseases worldwide. There is definite decline in rates of death from infectious disease from 1900 to 1980, but the rate dropped from 797 per 100,000 people to 36 per 100,000 people (Armstrong et al. 1999). However, from 1980 onwards, that rate doubled, largely because of immunocompromised states, spread of drug-resistant bacterial pathogens, such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), vancomycin-resistant enterococci, multiple-drug-resistant gram-negative bacteria, and multiple-drug-resistant tuberculosis (Cohen 2000). While the rise in mortality is due partly to infection in more seriously ill or immunocompromised patients, there is no doubting the need for new strategies and new molecules to treat pathogens that are resistant to nearly the full array of contemporary antibiotics. A second indication of the need for novel antibacterial therapeutics is the almost 40-year innovation gap between introductions of new molecular classes of antibiotics: fluoroquinolones in 1962 and the oxazolidinone linezolid in 2000 (Walsh 2003a,b).

Author(s): Farhan Ahmad Khan

Abstract | Full-Text | PDF

Share This Article