More than one million people worldwide died annually due to antibiotic resistance between 1990 and 2021. Photo: Shutterstock
More than one million people worldwide died annually due to antibiotic resistance between 1990 and 2021, and more than 39 million could die from antibiotic-resistant infections in the next 25 years, according to a global analysis published in The Lancet.
Future deaths from antibiotic resistance are projected to be highest in South Asia (including India, Pakistan and Bangladesh), where a total of 11.8 million deaths are predicted to be directly due to antibiotic resistance between 2025 and 2050, according to a group of researchers forming the Global Research Project on Antimicrobial Resistance (GRAM).
Antibiotic, or antimicrobial, resistance occurs when drugs designed to kill infectious bacteria and fungi become ineffective because the bacteria have evolved and developed an ability to overcome these drugs.
Researchers said deaths due to antibiotic resistance will also be high in other parts of South and East Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
Additionally, trends between 1990 and 2021 suggested that among people aged 70 years and older, deaths caused by antibiotic resistance increased by more than 80 percent and will continue to affect older people more in the coming years, the authors said.
Over the same period, deaths due to antibiotic resistance among children under five fell by more than 50 percent, they found.
“The decline in deaths from sepsis (a bloodstream infection) and antibiotic resistance among young children over the past three decades is an incredible achievement. However, these findings show that while infections have become less common in young children, they have become more difficult to treat when they do occur,” said senior author Kevin Ikuta, an affiliate professor at the Institute for Health Metrics (IHME) at the University of Washington, USA, and one of the GRAM Project collaborators.
“Moreover, the threat posed by antimicrobial resistance to older people will only increase as the population ages. Now is the time to act to protect people around the world from the threat posed by antimicrobial resistance,” Ikuta said.
According to the authors, improved access to healthcare and antibiotics could save a total of 92 million lives between 2025 and 2050. The study is the first global analysis of trends in antimicrobial resistance over time, they said.
Rising antibiotic resistance, one of the “cornerstones of modern health care,” is a major cause for concern and the findings highlighted the significance of the threat to global health, according to senior author Mohsen Naghavi of IHME.
“Understanding how trends in antimicrobial resistance deaths have changed over time and how they are likely to change in the future is vital to making informed decisions that help save lives,” Naghavi said.
The analysis was based on data from 520 million people of all ages in 204 countries and territories, taken from a wide range of sources, including hospital and death records, and information on antibiotic use.
The estimates relate to 22 disease-causing microbes (pathogens), 84 pathogen-drug combinations and 11 infectious symptoms such as bloodstream infections, the authors said.
In 2019, deaths related to antibiotic resistance were higher than those caused by HIV/AIDS or malaria, directly causing 1.2 million deaths and playing a role in nearly five million other deaths, according to the first study by the GRAM Project, published in 2022.
(Only the headline and image of this report may have been reworked by Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
First published: September 17, 2024 | 8:05 am IS
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