As we welcome the new year 2020 with hope and delight it is painstaking to announce that, we are now marching in the post antibiotic era. It has been a long way since the miracle cure of Mrs. Anne Miller, who became the first ever person to be saved by an antibiotic in 1942 to the present day. The discovery of penicillin antibiotics helped save millions of lives but bacterial resistance to almost all known available antimicrobials and paucity of the newer antimicrobials threatens the rise of untreatable infections. According to the Centers for disease control and prevention, US department of health and human services the post antibiotic era is already here, and we are living in it [1]. By the year 2050, it is predicted that antimicrobial resistance will cause ten million deaths and 100 trillion dollars loss to the economy of the world [2]. One of the major cause of concern is overuse of antimicrobial drugs in humans, animals, poultry and crops, which needs to be addressed. The strategies recommended to combat this menace include the Judicious use of antimicrobials, preventing infections rather than treating them and encouragement and support by the government to pharmaceutical companies for development of newer antimicrobials.

The bidirectional brain-gut axis

  We as health care professionals have a great responsibility and hopefully, we can avert the impending doom. The simple methods like not sharing the antimicrobials or using the left-over prescriptions, using antibiotics only when prescribed, ensuring that your patients take full course of antibiotics prescribed can aid in decreasing resistance. It is our duty to create awareness of this issue among the patients and community. Antibiotics should not be prescribed for treatment of viral infections like influenza, common cold, runny nose. Also hand hygiene is the single most important element of infection control and can significantly reduce the risk of cross transmission of infection [3].

References

1. CDC. Antibiotic Resistance Threats in the United States. Atlanta, GA: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services CDC (2019).
2. Tangcharoensathien V., et al. “Antimicrobial resistance: from global agenda to national strategic plan, Thailand”. Bulletin of the World Health Organization 95 (2017): 599-603. 
3. Mathur P. “Hand hygiene: back to the basics of infection control”. Indian Journal of Medical Research 134 (2011): 611-620.

Citation

Citation: Naser Ashraf Tadvi. "Welcome 2020: The Post Antibiotic Era Begins, Let’s Fight Back".Acta Scientific Pharmacology 1.2 (2020): 01.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2020 Naser Ashraf Tadvi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.