Scientists warn that annual deaths due to antimicrobial resistance could increase by about 70% in the next 25 years. More than 39 million people could die in the next 25 years worldwide from infections caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria, a third of them in South Asia, including India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, estimates a study published this Monday (16/09) by the British medical journal The Lancet.
A more comprehensive estimate, which considers only the association between antibiotic resistance and deaths, but not a direct cause-and-effect relationship, suggests that bacterial antibiotic resistance will indirectly contribute to an additional 169 million deaths over the same period.
This is an in-depth study of the impacts of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) on global health over time, revealing trends between 1990 and 2021 and estimating the potential impact between 2025 and 2050 for 204 countries and territories.
The analysis reveals that, each year, more than 1 million people died from antimicrobial resistance worldwide between 1990 and 2021 and that, during this period, deaths due to antimicrobial resistance among children under 5 years of age decreased by 50%, while deaths among people over 5 years of age increased by more than 80%.
By 2050, the number of annual deaths directly attributed to antibiotic resistance will reach 1.91 million and the number of deaths associated with it will reach 8.22 million, if no measures are taken to reverse this trend, the international team responsible for the research said.
These annual numbers represent increases of 67.5% and 74.5% per year, respectively, in the number of deaths attributed directly and indirectly to antibiotic resistance in 2021, researchers from the Global Antimicrobial Resistance Research Project wrote.
Antibiotic emergency
Better care for serious infections, new vaccines to prevent infections, and more judicious medical practices that limit antibiotic use to appropriate cases could save a total of 92 million lives between 2025 and 2050, the study found.
The study was released ahead of a high-level UN General Assembly meeting on the issue on September 26.
“This landmark study confirms that the world is facing an antibiotic emergency, with devastating human costs for families and communities around the world,” said the UK’s Special Envoy on Antimicrobial Resistance and a member of the UN Inter-Agency Coordination Group on Antimicrobial Resistance Dame Sally Davies, who was not involved in the research.
Mutations lead to resistance
Antibiotics are medicines used to treat infections caused by bacteria. Some bacteria have genetic mutations that make them resistant to antibiotics, and the more an antibiotic is used, the greater the chance of resistance to its action.
In 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared antibiotic resistance one of the top ten global public health threats. That year, more people died from antibiotic resistance than from AIDS or malaria.
The new study’s estimates were made for 22 types of pathogenic organisms, 84 drug-antibacterial combinations, and 11 infectious syndromes, such as meningitis and sepsis.
The estimates were based on data from 520 million people of all ages in 204 countries, from a wide range of sources, including hospital data, death registries and data on antibiotic use.
as/cn (Reuters, Efe, Lusa)
Source: Terra
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