World Health Organization: Drug-resistant superbugs are here

Public health experts have been worried about the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria for a while now, but on Monday, the World Health Organization (WHO) officially warned that these “superbugs” pose an “enormous threat to human health,” the New York Times reports.

If that weren’t scary enough, early on Tuesday the WHO released an official list of the 12 most dangerous pathogens that medical experts and pharmaceutical researchers should focus their efforts on fighting first.

“We are fast running out of treatment options,” Marie-Paule Kieny, WHO assistant director general, said at a press conference on Monday. “If we leave it to market forces alone, the new antibiotics we most urgently need are not going to be developed in time.”

According to Science magazine, the top three pathogens on the list — rated as “critical priority” — are gram-negative bacteria that are already resistant to multiple drugs, including enterobacteriaceae (the Times reports that E. coli, salmonella, and Yersinia pestis, which causes the bubonic plague, are all members of the enterobacteriaceae family).

While they’re not widespread, gram-negative bacteria can cause severe, deadly infections, especially in the intestinal tract (in contrast, gram-positive bacteria tend to affect your nose and skin more).

Those whose immune systems are already compromised — infants, the elderly, and transplant recipients, for example — are at particular risk.

The WHO named six other pathogens as “high priority,” including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (aka MRSA) and antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea.

The last three pathogens, including Streptococcus pneumoniae, Haemophilus influenzae, and shigella, are considered “medium priority,” because they’re currently susceptible to antibiotics, though experts fear they’ll soon become resistant as well.

In 2013, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) released a similar list, though the CDC’s list looked more at bacteria that’s hard to treat (such as drug-resistant gonorrhea) but not fatal, whereas the WHO’s list examines bacteria that’s more likely to be fatal.

Both the CDC and WHO agree that drug-resistant bacteria is increasingly becoming a worldwide problem and that more (a lot more) needs to be done to combat it — otherwise, we could be looking at a health threat on par with terrorism.

Because antibiotics are used on a short-term basis, they’re not very profitable for drug companies. Consequently, only a handful of new antibiotics have entered the market in the past 10 years.

To encourage more innovation, the WHO is calling for a “global innovation fund” to fill in the gaps left by industry research on antibiotics.

China, the U.S., and Britain have all taken steps to start those funds. The WHO also hopes to encourage more collaboration between doctors and vets, because resistant bacteria that starts in animals can spread to humans.

Currently, the CDC estimates that drug-resistant bacterial infections kill 23,000 people in the U.S. every year. Worldwide, it could be as many at 700,000 people each year, though it's hard to gauge the exact number.

“We’re at a tipping point, Jean C. Patel, a CDC specialist who consulted with the WHO on the new list, told the New York Times. “We can take action and turn the tide — or lose the drugs we have.”