Penicillin
Over the last 60 years Penicillin has been significant to the decline of infectious diseases. It was discovered in the late 19th Century but wasn’t accepted until the 1940’s, when it was launched as the first antibiotic. Although new research suggests that it is now becoming obsolete as there is an increase in resistance to bacteria with existing drugs.
As we are more aware today, the lifeline of a drug is now less set in stone.
In a study which looks to a “major health crisis” from antibiotic resistance , authors promote governments to act in research into new drugs.
There is major concern for future drug development, due to the slowing down of new-drug development and the high profits made by the pharmaceutical industry. The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) reports that governments need to cultivate investments in the discovery of new antibiotics that can manage the increase of numbers in people dying from infections.
The Policies and Incentives for Promoting Innovation in Antibiotic Research report warns of problems with penicillin stemming mainly from over- prescribing, especially in such nations as France, Spain and Romania.
He said: “Antibiotic resistance is a much more important situation than swine flu, for instance, and it will only get worse.”
Mossialos hoped that governments would introduce incentives to encourage pharmaceutical companies to develop new antibiotics, he also suggested an international fund that would invest in the early stages of antibiotic R&D, and guarantee sizable orders for any new antibiotics created.The major concern is over prescribing is encouraging the emergence of resistant bacteria, due to common misdiagnosis of viral infections as bacteria infections, and offering antibiotics to treat them.
Dr Kathleen Holloway of the World Health Organization (WHO), says that the antibiotic resistance problem is global and that diseases including childhood pneumonia, dysentery and tuberculosis (TB) are no longer responding to the first given antibiotics in some parts of the world.
CNN reported Halloway saying “research and development (R&D) of new antibiotics isn’t keeping up with the development of resistance.” She agreed with Mossialos’ findings, stating if we [governments] don’t do something soon, it is very likely that the pharmaceutical industry could be facing a stage where all old drugs have resistance and there are no new drugs to be offered.
As Holloway reports: “If we run out of antibiotics it’s not just poor people with infections who will suffer, it’s people across the globe who will find they won’t be able to have anti-cancer therapies or routine operations that today rely on antibiotics.”
The Treatments are critical to the treatment across the globe of patients such and antibiotics such as penicillin, and without such drugs the industry could soon be facing its largest crisis in decades.