Question

You have been contacted by the World Health Organization. Because you are a renowned microbiologist, they have asked you to join a panel of experts to come up with recommendations to curb the global problem of antibiotic resistance.  

Before the meeting, you need to draft a document outlining at least one recommendation in each of the following categories: 1) discovery of new antibiotics, 2) strategies to make ineffective antibiotics effective again, 3) ways to minimize the emergence and spread of resistance, and 4) methods to protect drugs of last resort.

Be sure to describe your strategy in detail, and specifically explain how your proposed strategies would address each category.

Answer 1

The document outlining the recommendations in each of the following categories:

1) Strategies that can be developed in the discovery of new antibiotics:

· The need to improve the awareness regarding the usage of antibiotics must be implemented locally to the practitioners as well as for patients to avoid the excess usage of the antibiotic in order to safeguard oneself from the resistance outcomes.

· There is a need to support more researches and funding for related researches like antibiotic resistance in order to develop new kinds of drugs to well treat the disease impacted by the resistance of antibiotics issue.

· The exposure of infections must be minimized as much as possible by providing people with general guidelines and healthcare-related information.

· The information gathered via the researchers by different researchers must be available to every practitioner to follow and understand the related outcomes of researches that can possibly help them to make necessary decisions while treating an individual meeting with the disease.

2) Strategies to make ineffective antibiotics effective again:

· The first approach for making the ineffective antibiotics active and potent again could be by using it in combinations. As possibly, when some effective combinations are made this can treat the disease compared to one at a time. This can become the new way or method of selecting medicines and developing the new characteristics out of each for action against the pathogen. These are saviors when no treatments are proving effective alone as a drug.

· Some novel ideas can be developed against pathogens while inventing for medicines or antibiotics such as by looking at the family tree of some well-known peptides sequences for example glycopeptides. In this group of the family when genes were manipulated by this particular group, this led other mechanisms of attacking the pathogen that reduces the resistance and can become effective again for treating the disease.

3) Ways to minimize the emergence and spread of resistance:

· Usage of antibiotics according to prescribed guidelines by the W.H.O is the first protocol to be applied to every practitioner.

· All the related guidelines and information must be put in action and onboard to make it available for everyone. Such as pharmacokinetic (PK) properties, pharmacodynamic (PD) properties, its potent effects on the microbiota along with recent developments, etc.

· The minimal dosage and related usage must be clearly recommended to the food animals’ owners for preventing the practice of its excess use that can build up chances to develop resistance.

· Education and awareness for people and doctors through several mediums must be generated to bring that in practice.

4) Methods to protect drugs of last resort:

· A drug of last resort is a pharmaceutical drug that is used to treat the disease when other options for the related issue does not possibly help. It needs to be discussed with the patient and doctor along with other medical professionals.

· There are many possibilities that can lead to using the drug of last resort in patients such as severe bacterial related sepsis etc. under such situations the drugs of last resort become the first choice to put in use because of increased vulnerability of patients with symptoms.

· Under critical timings, it is important to consider the proper dosage to use for drugs used as a last resort for the patient especially dealing with high mortality circumstances.

· One such example of drugs used as last resort is Vancomycin. This is effective for dealing when treating the multiple drug-resistant related infectious pathogens.