Editorial : Community series - characterization of mobile genetic elements associated with acquired resistance mechanisms, volume II

Abstract

Antibiotic resistance in bacteria remains a great challenge to clinical medicine as resistant bacterial infections are very difficult to manage. It is estimated that antibiotic-resistant infections resulted in 1.27 million deaths in 2019, which is expected to increase to 10 million deaths annually by 2050 (Antimicrobial Resistance Collaborators, 2022). In the US alone, at least 2 million people got an antimicrobial-resistant infection, of which at least 23,000 people died in 2019 (CDC, 2019). In the EU, 541,000 deaths were associated with antibiotic resistance while 133,000 deaths were attributable to this menace (European Antimicrobial Resistance Collaborators, 2022). Moreover, the costs associated with antibiotic resistance have been estimated by Nelson et al. (2022) to be $1.9 billion in just a retrospective study. In another study conducted by the CDC and the University of Utah School of Medicine, it was concluded that $4.6 billion in health care costs accrued annually from treating antibiotic resistance in six pathogens in the US (CDC, 2021). These statistics evince why the WHO has categorized antibiotic resistance among the top 10 threats for global health (Antimicrobial Resistance Collaborators, 2022).