1Department of Veterinary Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, U.P. Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhayaya Pashu Chikitsa Vigyan Vishwavidyalaya Evam Go-Anusandhan Sansthan (DUVASU), Mathura, India
2Department of Veterinary Medicine, U.P. Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhayaya Pashu Chikitsa Vigyan Vishwavidyalaya Evam Go-Anusandhan Sansthan (DUVASU), Mathura, India
3Department of Veterinary Public Health, U.P. Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhayaya Pashu Chikitsa Vigyan Vishwavidyalaya Evam Go-Anusandhan Sansthan (DUVASU), Mathura, India
4Department of Livestock Product Technology, U.P. Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhayaya Pashu Chikitsa Vigyan Vishwavidyalaya Evam Go-Anusandhan Sansthan (DUVASU), Mathura, India
*Corresponding author: B Sharma; E-mail: barkha16vet@gmail.com
Online Published on 29 September, 2022.
One of the major achievements in medicine was in 1928 when the first antibiotic penicillin was discovered by Alexander Flemming. They were touted as ‘Miracle drug’ and brought great promise of a future without infectious disease. And now we face the threat of superbugs or nightmare bacteria threatening to render our future bleak. Each year, Anti Micorbial Resistance (AMR) kills more than 700,000 people globally. A ‘superbug’ is a bacterium capable of causing uncontrollable infections, a microbe which can’t be eradicated, and a germ which can kill when normally it shouldn’t. These are no less than “nightmare bacteria” that have a potential to threaten people in every nook and corner of the world catastrophically. Widespread use of antibiotics without good stewardship has eventually led to emergence of multiple drug resistance against almost all of our life saving antimicrobial drugs including the last resort wonder drug colistin. Thus, if we still do not face this problem head on and make some strict decisions, we may be looking at a post antibiotic era marked with minor wounds becoming life threatening and people dying from simple infections.
• Superbug is a bacterium that has become resistant to the conventional treatment of antibiotics and is capable of causing uncontrollable infections in humans as well as in animals.
• Main superbugs are MRSA, VRSA, CRPA, CRAB, ESBLs and resistant Mycobacteria causing MDR and XDR TB.
• India has become notorious as the antibiotic resistance capital of the world.
Antimicrobial resistance AMR, Superbug, Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus MRSA, Carbapenem- resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), Carbapenem Reisistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa (CRPA), Carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii (CRAB)
