Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) is a global health and development threat killing at least 1.27 million people worldwide and was associated with nearly 5 million deaths in 2019 alone. In US only, more than 2.8 million AMR infections occur each year killing more than 35,000 people.
WHO has declared AMR as one of the top 10 global public health threats facing humanity, with projections for ~10 million deaths per year by 2050.
AMR occurs when microorganisms stop responding to medicines making infections harder to treat and increasing the risk of severe illness and death. Since microorganisms evolve quickly, pathogens have adopted even last-resort antibiotics, prompting the urgent discovery of newer agents with a novel mode of action. German and US scientists collaborated to come up with a method to biosynthesize fluorinated antibiotics with tremendous potential to revolutionize antibiotic development.
While such developments are welcoming news, as of today diagnosing infections right away using prominent diagnostic kits like Acutis Reveal™ tests, multiplex PCR-based tests covering a wide array of infections with 96-100% sensitivity and 100% specificity, are the only impactful measures to identify the pathogen promptly thus avoiding unintended excessive use of antibiotics and curbing the problem of AMR.
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