antibiotics still in crisis

Here comes another important topic that I have covered a few times before, but do people listen? Experts have been warning of the coming antibiotics crisis for decades now, but we still overuse and misuse them, and the pharma industry develops too few new products that could replace the ones lost to the spread of resistance.


So the post-antibiotic era, i.e. the return of untreatable infectious diseases and untreatable complications after routine surgery, is now coming dangerously close. However, in an attempt not to get too depressed, I have also rounded up some promising developments that may help to keep the apocalypse at bay for a little bit longer. My feature is out now:

The race against antibiotics resistance


Current Biology Volume 29, issue 18, pages R859-R861, September 23, 2019

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Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), shown here with a dead human blood cell, has become a widely feared ‘hospital superbug’ resistant to multiple drugs. Widespread use and misuse of antibiotics has, however, produced many other multidrug-resistant strains. (Photo: NIAID/Flickr (CC BY 2.0).)