In the microworld, there is an alarming “war” between bacteria and antibiotics, with life and death at stake. It is a race without smoke, but it profoundly affects the fate of all life on Earth.
Bacteria, as one of the oldest forms of life on Earth, are everywhere. Some of them live in vast soils, some in vast oceans and others in humans or other organisms. The vast majority of bacteria live in harmony with their host, such as good fungus in the human intestinal tract, which can help us digest food, synthetic vitamins and play an indispensable role in maintaining health. However, some of these bacteria, such as the golden fungus, the coliform, etc., are subject to change under certain conditions, becoming the “principal cause” of various diseases, ranging from cold fever to injury to serious diseases such as pneumonia and meningitis.
Antibiotics were produced to combat bacterial infections. Since the discovery and widespread application of penicillin in the 1940s, antibiotics have been like a magical “magic bomb” that has revolutionized the medical field. It can quickly kill or inhibit the growth and reproduction of bacteria, making many infectious diseases, which were once deadly, curable and thus saving countless lives. In the “golden age” of antibiotics, people seem to have seen the dawn of victory over bacteria and even once thought that bacterial infections would no longer pose a threat to human health.
But bacteria are not waiting to die, and in their long-term confrontation with antibiotics, they have evolved into sophisticated “defensive mechanisms” and “counter-attack strategies” in which a fierce “arms race” has opened. Some bacteria alter the structure of their own cell walls or membranes through genetic mutations, making it difficult for antibiotics to penetrate into the cell to function; or creating enzymes that can decompose antibiotics, such as β-implamide, can damage the structure of penicillin and render it sterile. Moreover, certain bacteria develop special “pump-out systems” that quickly remove antibiotics from the cell, thereby reducing the concentration of antibiotics in the cell and avoiding their lethal effects.
Bacteria resistance is occurring and spreading at alarming rates. Once highly sensitive to penicillin, a large number of methoxysilin-resistant strains (MRSAs) have emerged. These “super bacteria” are resistant to a wide range of antibiotics, are extremely difficult to treat and have significantly increased mortality. In the hospital environment, as a result of the widespread use of antibiotics, drug-resistant bacteria are more easily transmitted between patients, creating a “high-prevalence zone” for drug-resistant bacteria. Moreover, drug-resistant bacteria can spread between animals and humans through the food chain, further increasing their reach. The World Health Organization estimates that if effective measures are not taken to address the problem of bacterial resistance, by 2050, the global number of deaths from drug-resistant infections could exceed 10 million per year, even more than the current number of cancer deaths, posing a significant threat to global public health security.
The war on bacteria and antibiotics also sounded the alarm for humanity. We must be profoundly aware that antibiotics are not everything and that their abuse only accelerates the emergence of bacterial resistance. In daily life, many people use antibiotics at their own discretion during cold fevers or in livestock breeding, which are used in large quantities to promote animal growth, invisible to the spread of bacterial resistance. In order to win the final victory of this war, we need to take multifaceted measures.
In the medical field, doctors should strictly follow the norms for the use of antibiotics and make reasonable selection of antibiotics based on the type of pathogens, the results of sensitive tests, etc., to avoid blind use of drugs and overuse. To strengthen the control and control of infections in hospitals, to strictly enforce the sterilization quarantine system and to reduce the spread of drug-resistant bacteria in hospitals. In the area of public education, there is a need for extensive public awareness-raising campaigns on the proper use of antibiotics, to make people aware of the dangers of the misuse of antibiotics and to put an end to the misperception of their use. Researchers are also working to develop new antibiotics and antibacterials, as well as to explore new antibacterial treatments, such as cactus therapy, and the application of antibacterial beryllium, in an attempt to tackle bacterial resistance from different angles.
The war on bacteria and antibiotics is still going on, a battle between human health and the future. Each and every one of us is in this war, and it is only through the concerted efforts of society as a whole to rationalize the use of antibiotics and strengthen drug-resistant monitoring and research that we will be able to take the initiative in this war, which is free of smoke, to safeguard the lines of defence of human health and to allow antibiotics to continue to exercise the power they deserve in the battle against bacteria, rather than to plunge us into a drug-free situation.
