My Looming Nightmare- The Growing Threat of Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria

Everyone has their worst nightmares in the form of disasters. For some people, it is a meteor strike, dinosaur apocalypse, super volcanoes, third world war, or even an unknown war, and for some, it is Artificial intelligence and climate change, but for me, one of my greatest nightmares is having a world where we have antibiotic-resistant bacteria with no solution.

If you are reading this post, there is a chance that at a point in time, an antibiotic has saved your life by tackling and killing that bacteria. Since the discovery of Penicillin, humans have lived longer compared to before that. If you believe that without antibiotics we would be living long, then let me remind you of the Black Death pandemic that killed millions of people in Europe and Asia as a result of no antibiotics to treat Yersinia pestis. If you were asked if such a pandemic can occur again, you would say NO.

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Alexander Fleming in 1928 was doing his usual but didn't know he was about to save the world from bacteria. He realized that a mold grew in his petri dish where he cultured Staphylococcus. He identified the mold as Penicillium notatum. Before his discovery, a lot of soldiers had died from infected wounds and his discovery was very important in the second world war. Years after that discovery, lots of antibiotics have been created and they have been saving lives.

Bacteria are beginning to outsmart our drugs and technology leading to a loss of effectiveness in antibiotics. The World Health Organization in 2010 said that about 500 thousand persons were infected with an antibiotic-resistant strain of tuberculosis and lots of these people died. When we thought that was all, In 2012, the Center for disease control said that 23,000 Americans died as a result of antibiotic-resistant bacteria infection.

An era of antibiotic-resistant bacteria can be very dangerous as simple things that can be treated can lead to the death of people. People could die from a sinus infection, scraped knee or skin, or a simple infection that is contaminated. We are surrounded and covered by bacteria. Bacteria can survive even in the most unsuitable place for humans, and this has made them ubiquitous.

Bacteria actually share genes with one another, and this is where we start to understand the problem we have. To transfer genetic information, bacteria use Horizontal gene transfer which includes transduction, transformation, and conjugation. With transformation, a living bacteria collect genetic information from a dead bacteria. It happens when bacteria are in a stage known as competence where they can collect DNA from their environment. Bacteria can also pass viruses to one another and that is known as transduction. The final one which a lot of us are familiar with is conjugation, where the bacteria fuse together and transfer genetic material to one another.

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So someone might ask what antibiotics or antibacterial drugs do? In simple terms, they kill the bacteria or slow the growth process of the bacteria so the immune systems of humans can destroy them. These drugs find the bacteria, bind to the bacteria, and kill the bacteria without affecting the human cells. These drugs target certain bacteria build-up or processes such as sugar and amino acids in the cell wall, therefore causing the cell wall to lyse and leading to the death of the bacteria. Some antimicrobial drugs attack the pathway of the bacteria such as folic acid production, and others attack bacteria protein production.

With this resistance, some bacteria produce enzymes that destroy the antibiotics, some would eject the antibiotics before it begins to function, while other would change the target of the drug, preventing the drug from finding the molecule it wants to target. But then, we are also improving. The use of Peptide-Conjugated Phosphorodiamidate Morpholino Oligomers (PPMO) has shown to be effective against bacteria such as Acinetobacter which is responsible for a lot of hospital-acquired infections. This drug targets the bacteria genes rather than the structure of the bacteria.

While this is one of my greatest fears, it can still be cubbed until scientists have been able to discover a way out. We should understand when and how to take antibiotics for infections. We should know when we should and shouldn't use antibiotics. Using antibiotics for every sign noticed in the body is dangerous because you might be using antibiotics for a viral infection, and this can lead to resistant bacteria. In lots of countries, physicians see antibiotics as the first resort when a person is ill whereas in reality, it should be the last resort when other treatments don't work.

Another problem that I see that has led to an increase in antibiotic-resistant bacteria is not using the drug as prescribed, and not completing the dosage. When you go to a lot of people's houses, you will be shocked to see a lot of antibiotic bottles that were not completed because the person feels better after taking them for a while. Not completing the dose would only make the bacteria stronger, also taking antibiotics without a prescription would also make the bacteria stronger.

^{For More Research}

^{https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7513766/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04800-3
https://www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/biggest-threats.html
https://www.who.int/news/item/13-01-2012-drug-resistant-tuberculosis
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5890718/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4536854/
https://www.khanacademy.org/science/ap-biology/gene-expression-and-regulation/mutations-ap/a/genetic-variation-in-prokaryotes}