Threats of antibiotic resistance: an obliged reappraisal.
Fernando BaqueroPublished in: International microbiology : the official journal of the Spanish Society for Microbiology (2021)
We are living in a society of fear, where the objectivity in estimating risks is distorted by the media and the interested parties. During more than half of a century, the feeling of antibiotic resistance as an apocalyptic phenomenon able to push our society to the high mortality rates caused by infectious diseases in the dark pre-antibiotic ages has been steadily rising. However, at the current status of modern medicine, at least in the high-medium income countries, mortality by lack of efficacy of the antibiotic armamentarium in the therapy of infections is a problem, but not a catastrophe. The threat of antibiotic resistance has many other aspects than failures of therapy in the individual patient. Among them, the increase in the frequency of severe and potentially lethal infections, as bacteremia, the population biology alterations of the healthy microbiota, the global acceleration of bacterial evolution by selecting natural genetic tools mediating microbial interactions, and, most importantly, by modifying the equilibrium and composition of environmental microbial communities. All these threats have huge implications for human health as members of a Biosphere entirely rooted in a menaced microbiosphere.
Keyphrases
- human health
- risk assessment
- infectious diseases
- climate change
- current status
- cardiovascular events
- risk factors
- case report
- microbial community
- mental health
- early onset
- cardiovascular disease
- dna methylation
- molecular dynamics simulations
- copy number
- type diabetes
- molecular dynamics
- mesenchymal stem cells
- multidrug resistant