The World’s Most Dangerous Superbugs

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), superbugs will soon be resistant to antibiotics.

“Antibiotic resistance is growing and we are running out of treatment options. If we leave it to market forces alone, the new antibiotics we most urgently need are not going to be developed in time,” said Dr. Marie-Paule Kieny, the WHO’s assistant director-general for health systems and innovation.

More importantly, the WHO has called on governments to stop relying on pharmaceutical companies to solve the crisis.

The WHO has published a list of the highest priority needs for new antibiotics. This list identifies 12 bacterial threats, grouping them into three categories: critical, high, and medium.

Three bacteria were listed as critical:

• Acinetobacter baumannii bacteria that are resistant to important antibiotics called carbapenems. These are highly drug resistant bacteria that can cause a range of infections for hospitalized patients, including pneumonia, wound, or blood infections.
• Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which are resistant to carbapenems. These bacteria can cause skin rashes and ear infectious in healthy people but also severe blood infections and pneumonia when contracted by sick people in the hospital.
• Enterobacteriaceae that are resistant to both carbepenems and another class of antibiotics, cephalosporins. This family of bacteria live in the human gut and includes bugs such as E. coli and Salmonella.

The WHO said, “Although mounting concerns about the worsening problem of antibiotic resistance have reinvigorated research efforts, producing new antibiotics is an expensive and challenging task.”

“While more R&D is vital, alone, it cannot solve the problem. To address resistance, there must also be better prevention of infections and appropriate use of existing antibiotics in humans and animals, as well as rational use of any new antibiotics that are developed in future”, said the WHO.

Dr. Kieny said, “The 12 bacteria featured on the priority list were chosen based on the level of drug resistance that already exists for each, the numbers of deaths they cause, the frequency with which people become infected with them outside of hospitals, and the burden these infections place on health care systems.”

The full list of bacteria was developed in collaboration with the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Tübingen, Germany, using a multi-criteria decision analysis technique vetted by a group of international experts.

Priority 1: Critical

1. Acinetobacter baumannii, carbapenem-resistant

2. Pseudomonas aeruginosa, carbapenem-resistant

3. Enterobacteriaceae, carbapenem-resistant, ESBL-producing

Priority 2: High

4. Enterococcus faecium, vancomycin-resistant

5. Staphylococcus aureus, methicillin-resistant, vancomycin-intermediate and resistant

6. Helicobacter pylori, clarithromycin-resistant

7. Campylobacter spp., fluoroquinolone-resistant

8. Salmonellae, fluoroquinolone-resistant

9. Neisseria gonorrhoeae, cephalosporin-resistant, fluoroquinolone-resistant

Priority 3: Medium

10. Streptococcus pneumoniae, penicillin-non-susceptible

11. Haemophilus influenzae, ampicillin-resistant

12. Shigella spp., fluoroquinolone-resistant

“This priority pathogens list, developed with input from across our community, is important to steer research in the race against drug resistant infection — one of the greatest threats to modern health,” said Tim Jinks, head of drug-resistant infections for the British medical charity Wellcome Trust.

According to research from the RAND Europe and KPMG project that 10 million more people would be expected to die every year than would be the case if resistance was kept to today’s level.

No conflicts of interest were disclosed.