International Microbiology ( IF 3.1 ) Pub Date : 2021-05-24 , DOI: 10.1007/s10123-021-00184-y Fernando Baquero 1
We are living in a society of fear, where the objectivity in estimating risks is distorted by the media and the interested parties. During more than half of a century, the feeling of antibiotic resistance as an apocalyptic phenomenon able to push our society to the high mortality rates caused by infectious diseases in the dark pre-antibiotic ages has been steadily rising. However, at the current status of modern medicine, at least in the high-medium income countries, mortality by lack of efficacy of the antibiotic armamentarium in the therapy of infections is a problem, but not a catastrophe. The threat of antibiotic resistance has many other aspects than failures of therapy in the individual patient. Among them, the increase in the frequency of severe and potentially lethal infections, as bacteremia, the population biology alterations of the healthy microbiota, the global acceleration of bacterial evolution by selecting natural genetic tools mediating microbial interactions, and, most importantly, by modifying the equilibrium and composition of environmental microbial communities. All these threats have huge implications for human health as members of a Biosphere entirely rooted in a menaced microbiosphere.
中文翻译:
抗生素耐药性的威胁:必须重新评估
我们生活在一个充满恐惧的社会,媒体和相关方扭曲了评估风险的客观性。在半个多世纪的时间里,抗生素耐药性作为一种世界末日现象能够将我们的社会推向在抗生素前黑暗时代由传染病引起的高死亡率的感觉一直在稳步上升。然而,在现代医学的现状下,至少在中高收入国家,抗生素设备在感染治疗中缺乏疗效而导致的死亡率是一个问题,但不是灾难。除了个别患者的治疗失败之外,抗生素耐药性的威胁还有许多其他方面。其中,严重和潜在致命感染的频率增加,如菌血症,健康微生物群的种群生物学改变,通过选择介导微生物相互作用的天然遗传工具,以及最重要的是,通过改变环境微生物群落的平衡和组成来加速细菌进化。作为一个完全植根于受威胁微生物圈的生物圈的成员,所有这些威胁对人类健康产生了巨大影响。