Superbugs

I was recently talking to a friend about how great it is to live in a world with modern medicine. Gone are the days when many ‘simple’ infections ended in death. For this, we have antibiotics to thank. But what if we had to return to those times when there simply wasn’t a medicine for bacterial infections? It is actually very possible that those time are not only in the past, but also in the near future, due to the emergence of antibiotic-resistant superbugs.

When you think of the word superbug, it might bring to mind an image of a brooding little bacterium in a cape. It probably actually didn’t for you, but it did for me. Interestingly enough, a superbug is in many ways the bacterial version of a supervillain. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a superbug is “a pathogenic microorganism and especially a bacterium that has developed resistance to the medications normally used against it.” But how do bacteria develop this resistance? According to a Medical News Today article, superbugs form because, in the presence of an antibiotic, only the bacteria strong enough to survive that medication procreate and pass on their traits. This naturally selective process forms new populations of bacteria that are stronger and more resistant to that antibiotic.

One such superbug is Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE). The CDC says that this type of bacteria generally causes infections in healthcare settings and is resistant to Carbapenem antibiotics, and, occasionally, all available antibiotics. They label it as “a threat to public health.” Indeed, in a 2019 AR threats report, the CDC reports that CRE was responsible for 13,100 hospitalizations and 1,100 deaths in 2017. This scary bacteria has even been nicknamed the “Nightmare bacteria.” (I think that’s a pretty good supervillain name for a bacterium, don’t you?)

In light of the destructive forces of CRE alone, not even mentioning the many other superbugs, it seems to be in the world’s best interest to prevent the formation of new superbugs. But how can this be done? Well, the Medical News Today article mentioned earlier gives some simple advice on this front. Basically, we should only take antibiotics when we really, really, need to. This means not taking them longer than prescribed and not taking them for viral infections. So, next time you drag your achy, tired body to the doctor and they tell you that you have a cold, DO NOT insist on an antibiotic. It will literally do nothing, and you will then become a major figure in the origin story of the next superbug.