Antibiotics stop working: Germany returns to the era before the discovery of penicillin

More and more bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics, drugs stop working, and very few new ones are being produced. This is reported by the German edition of Bild.

Thanks to the first antibiotic penicillin, people can live 30 years longer compared to the times before its appearance. However, now humanity is at risk of losing this fight again, the newspaper writes.

The results of a recent study indicate that by 2050, more than 39 million people worldwide could die from infections caused by antibiotic-resistant microorganisms. Already, 35 thousand people die annually in the European Union alone from infections caused by resistant pathogens.

"Firstly, antibiotics are still prescribed too often in outpatient practice. Secondly, with the restoration of international travel after the pandemic, we receive a lot of resistant bacteria. Particularly high levels of sustainability are observed in countries such as Greece, Portugal, Turkey, as well as India and other Asian countries. People need to be warned: if someone brings such a bacterium from vacation and infects, for example, his sick grandfather with it, it can become fatal for him," said intensive care professor Frank M. Brunkhorst from the University Clinic of Jena), indicating the main reasons for these changes.

According to experts, in many cases, antibiotics are not needed, for example, for almost all respiratory tract infections. These infections are usually caused by viruses against which antibiotics are ineffective. But, however, children who catch a cold often receive an excessive amount of medication. In addition, antibiotics are too easily prescribed for urinary tract infections such as cystitis, although in most cases this is not required.

The shortage of new antibiotics exacerbates the crisis — since 2017, only 12 new drugs have been approved.

Professor Yvonne Mast from the Leibniz Institute DSMZ in Braunschweige notes that the path from the discovery of a new substance to its application is long and expensive.

"Especially clinical trials require high costs. Only one of about 5,000 substances reaches the stage of commercial use, it takes from 8 to 15 years, and the development cost ranges from 100 million to 2 billion euros. Due to the unfavorable cost-profit ratio, the industry is gradually withdrawing from the field of antibiotic development and research. Income from investments in antibiotics is significantly lower than from other medicines. We urgently need more funding in this area, for example, more grants and faster solutions. The technology is already there. But the funds are too small. As in many other areas, we can be overtaken by countries such as China, which invest much more in this area," says the professor.

Professor Brunkhorst said that it is a huge task for politicians to return antibiotic production to Germany and Europe. According to him, today not a single drug is produced in Germany, they all come from India or China, Germany is completely dependent on this.

"We are on the verge of losing the achievements of modern medicine and are returning to the era before the discovery of penicillin," stated the president of the Society for Infectious Therapy this week. Paul Ehrlich Mathias Plec.

Bild writes that the German Ministry of Health refused to comment on his statement, noting only an improvement in the field of drug provision thanks to the law on combating supply shortages.