Question

How can risks of resistance to antibiotics be assessed?

Answer 1

Antibiotic resistance is considered as one of the most serious threats in public health sector. Antibiotics are molecules that are designed to destroy harmful bacteria that can cause illness by infecting the healthy cells. Antibiotics usually kill these bacteria by inhibiting their metabolism or altering their cell structure, such that it becomes weak and susceptible to the external environment. Bacteria can gain resistance over these antibiotics if they are able to activate genes that can produce proteins to destroy the antibiotic molecules, or they develop an alternate pathway to circumvent the damage done to the cells by the antibiotics.

Therefore, a risk assessment of resistance against antibiotics has to be studied. A lot of research, policy development, and regulatory compliance have contributed to deep understanding of the risks involved in consuming antibiotics. Usually, the risk assessment involves scientific and analytical processes which are employed to study the probability of adverse outcomes that can result from exposure to a hazard (biological, chemical, or physical agent) or hazardous event.

A general approach towards risk assessment has the following tenets –

1. Hazard identification: This is the process of analysing whether or not exposures to a hazardous molecule (physical, chemical or biological) or a hazardous event can have an impact on the health of the individual.
2. Dose–response assessment: This is the process where the relation between dose of an agent and a particular adverse health event is established and monitored.
3. Exposure assessment: It measures the intensity, frequency, and duration of human exposures to an agent.
4. Risk characterization: It summarizes the occurrence of health effect with respect to the various environs of human exposure as analyzed in exposure assessment.