Team:Sheffield/episode1
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THE PROBLEM |
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What would a post-antibiotic era look like?
We spoke to Dr. Milton Wainwright from the University of Sheffield, an expert in the history of antibiotic resistance told us about how the power of antibiotics has become so diminished since its first use in clinical medicine.
Video 1. An interview with Dr. Wainwright, discussing antibiotic resistance development and factors increasing the development of resistant bacterial strains.
The figure below shows incredibly rapid rate that bacteria develop antibiotic resistance to antibiotics as they have developed. This highlights the importance of using the remaining effective antibiotics we have properly.
Figure. 1 Timeline with the year each antibiotic was introduced onto the market, and when antibiotic resistance was first observed.1
References
1. Clatworth A.E., Pierson E, Hung D.T. Targeting virulence: a new paradigm for antimicrobial therapy. Nature Chemical Biology. 2007;3(9):541-548
As Dr. Wainwright explained, one of the factors contributing to this rapid development of antibiotic resistance is their overuse. In the face of this crisis, why do we continue to overuse antibiotics?
Economics studies people’s behaviours under the constraint of scarce resources. For our project, patients and doctors face the scarcity of antibiotics in terms of its effectiveness over the time. However, taking antibiotics in some cases does offer benefits, therefore decisions must be made about how much antibiotics should be consumed in total.
To offer a conceptual explanation to this phenomenon we turned to an Economics lecturer at the University of Sheffield, Dr. Jolian McHardy.
Video 2. A short talk by Dr. Jolian McHardy on the economics of misusing antibiotics.
As explained by Dr. McHardy, externalities are the result of an activity that affects others with a consequence, and is therefore not correctly priced or consumed in the market. This is the basis of sub-optimal antibiotic usage.
Our device could reduce the amount of externality produced by antibiotic consumption, through providing information for more accurate prescribing decisions. This is achieved because our device detects the Lipocalin-2, which is produced by the immune system in response to any bacterial infection.
