A New Study Has Found This Infection Could Claim 10 Million Lives Per Year by 2050

When you develop an infection, your doctor may likely prescribe antibiotics to combat the sickness—and much of the time, that approach will be successful. However, a new study published in the gold-standard medical journal The Lancet says that increasingly, standard treatment approaches are failing as a result of what scientists are calling antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), antimicrobial resistance occurs when bacterial, viral, fungal, and parasitic infections become immune to antimicrobial medicines. “As a result of drug resistance, antibiotics and other antimicrobial medicines become ineffective and infections become difficult or impossible to treat, increasing the risk of disease spread, severe illness, disability and death,” their experts write.

In an attempt to assess the global burden of antimicrobial resistance, in their Lancet report dated September 28, 2024 the researchers for this study say that they looked at data collected over the course of 31 years, spanning from 1990 to 2021. They determined that by the final year of the study period, 4.71 million deaths were associated with bacterial antimicrobial resistance annually.

The team also used the data to project their findings nearly 30 years into the future to the year 2050. In doing so, they forecasted a concerning spread of “superbug infections” and estimated that these could claim the lives of up to 10 million people per year by that time.

The researchers noted that the threat of death resulting from antimicrobial-resistant infections appeared to vary depending on the patient’s age. “From 1990 to 2021, deaths from [antimicrobial resistance] decreased by more than 50% among children younger than 5 years yet increased by over 80% for adults 70 years and older,” they wrote. A strain of staph was the most significant contributor, as the research team reports: “For both deaths associated with and deaths attributable to AMR, meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus increased the most globally.”

Similarly, geographical location appeared to affect risk level: “Super-regions with the highest all-age [antimicrobial resistance] mortality rate in 2050 are forecasted to be south Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean,” the team wrote.

The researchers are not alone in sounding the alarm about this growing danger. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has described the escalating problem as an “urgent global public health threat.”

However, the health authority says there are several ways to lower your risk of developing a superbug infection, or perpetuating the spread of superbugs more broadly.  They recommend washing your hands regularly, keeping wounds clean, staying up-to-date with routine vaccinations, preparing food safely, and practicing healthy habits around animals. It’s also important to talk to your doctor about infection risk, including sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and to discuss treatment options if you do become ill, the CDC advises.

“Antibiotics and antifungals save lives, but any time they are used they can cause side effects and contribute to antimicrobial resistance,” their experts write. “Learn more about using antibiotics, including when they are needed and when they are not.”

The research team echoes this with their interpretation, noting in the Lancet report that “it is important that interventions combine infection prevention, vaccination, minimization of inappropriate antibiotic use in farming and humans, and research into new antibiotics to mitigate the number of [antimicrobial-resistance] deaths that are forecasted for 2050.”

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