Drug-resistant superbugs estimated to kill 39 million people by 2050

Candida auris fungus, an emerging multidrug-resistant fungus, 3D visualization | Photo credit: Dr_Microbe

A global analysis released Monday, September 16, 2024 estimates that infections by drug-resistant superbugs could kill nearly 40 million people over the next 25 years, and researchers urge action to avoid this catastrophic scenario.

Superbugs – species of bacteria or germs that have become resistant to antibiotics, making them more difficult to treat – have been identified as a growing threat to global health.

The analysis is described as the first to track the global impact of superbugs over time and predict what might happen next.

According to the GRAM study, between 1990 and 2021, superbugs – also known as antimicrobial resistance (AMR) – killed more than one million people each year worldwide. The Lancet Journal.

The study said that mortality rates among children under five from superbugs have fallen by more than 50 per cent in the past three decades because of better measures to prevent and control infections in infants. However, now when children are infected with superbugs, the infections are much harder to treat.

The death rate among people over the age of 70 has increased by more than 80 per cent over the same period, as the ageing population has become more vulnerable to infection.

Deaths from infections caused by a type of staph bacteria called MRSA, which has become resistant to many antibiotics, doubled to 130,000 in 2021 compared with three decades ago, the study said.

The researchers studied 22 pathogens, 84 combinations of drugs and pathogens, and 11 infectious syndromes such as meningitis. The study included data from 520 million individual records from 204 countries and territories.

Using modelling, the researchers estimated that, based on current trends, the number of direct deaths from AMR would increase by 67 percent to nearly two million per year by 2050.

According to modelling, this would also have contributed to annual mortality rates reaching 8.2 million, an increase of around 75 per cent.

A threat to modern medicine

In this scenario, AMR will cause 39 million direct deaths and 169 million total deaths over the next quarter century.

But less dire scenarios are also possible.

Modelling suggests that if the world works to improve care for serious infections and access to antimicrobial medicines, it could save 92 million lives by 2050.

“These findings show that AMR has been a significant global health threat for decades and that this threat continues to grow,” said co-author Mohsen Naghavi of the US-based Institute for Health Metrics.

Jeremy Noakes, infectious disease policy chief at the UK-based health charity Wellcome Trust, warned that the impact of rising AMR rates would be felt worldwide.

“The growing burden of AMR on the scale described in the GRAM report would continue to undermine modern medicine as we know it, as the antibiotics we rely on to keep routine medical interventions safe and routine could lose their effectiveness,” Knox said. AFP,

He said that although political attention to the topic has grown steadily over the past decade, “so far we have not seen governments around the world move quickly enough to tackle the threat of AMR.”

He described the high-level AMR meeting at the UN on 26 September as a “pivotal moment” in the fight against superbugs.

Antimicrobial resistance is a natural phenomenon, but the overuse and misuse of antibiotics in humans, animals, and plants has made the problem worse.