Antimicrobial resistance
Antimicrobial resistance could kill millions without innovation. What are the best strategies to prevent it?
This profile is tailored towards students studying biological sciences and health sciences, however we expect there to be valuable open research questions that could be pursued by students in other disciplines.
Why is this a pressing problem?
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) refers to the phenomenon of micro-organisms evolving and mutating such that the drugs designed to kill them cease to be effective. This is a growing problem which threatens many aspects of modern healthcare. If AMR becomes more widespread, previously routine procedures like appendectomies could become associated with severe risks for patients, urinary tract infections could become untreatable and pneumonia could once again become a frequently life-threatening disease. The prospects for treating serious conditions such as cancer or brain damage would also be seriously impaired if we could not count on the reliable treatment of infections. While anyone can get and potentially die from a resistant infection, the problem may be significantly worse in poor countries where general infection frequencies are higher and access to healthcare is worse.
In terms of scale, this paper (2022) estimates that 4.95 million deaths were associated with bacterial AMR in 2019, including 1.27 million deaths attributable to bacterial AMR. The Review of Anti-Microbial Resistance (2014) predicts that by 2050, 10 million people could die every year, globally, because of resistant infections, and the world’s GDP will be between 2% and 3.5% less than it otherwise would be. These numbers has been debated, and one should be careful since statistics on deaths due to resistant infections are poor, especially from low- and middle-income countries where the diagnostic facilities to identify resistance are often not as robust.
While the field of antimicrobial resistance itself does not seem very neglected, there seem to be important approaches within the field that are neglected. Implementation research on the effect of public health policies, information campaigns, prescription practices, training of professionals and nudging interventions etc. is needed to be able to prioritise the best strategies and use resources effectively. The need for such knowledge is most critical in low- and middle-income countries. Another promising approach is designing and testing strategies for safely deploying new drugs in areas with poor healthcare access, where restrictive prescription practises from high-income settings may backfire due to a lack of prescribers, potentially rendering new drugs completely unavailable.
Watch the video below for an introduction to the development of antibiotics, antimicrobial resistance and possible approaches to the problem.
If you’re interested in learning more about this issue, you can check The AMR Studio podcast which features interviews with researchers working on AMR.
-
Description text goes here
-
Description text goes here
-
Description text goes here
Contributors: This profile was last updated 31/12/2022. Thanks to Cecilia Tilli for creating this profile and Akhil Bansal for helpful feedback. All errors remain our own. Learn more about how we create our profiles.
