Medical Innovations: Combatting the Growing Problem of Drug Resistance

In recent years, the medical community has been met with a new challenge: drug resistance. Drug resistant organisms “are difficult to treat, requiring costly and sometimes toxic alternatives” (CDC, 2018). This development means that previously simple to treat diseases such as malaria or tuberculosis are requiring increasingly innovative and aggressive methods to be cured.

Yet there is another, more serious, implication of this fact: these new methods will be expensive and limited, and therefore unavailable where they are needed most. Over 95% of cases of TB and 91% of cases of malaria arise in developing countries. Access to medication, even for a straightforward disease, is difficult to come by- drug resistance further complicates this already unfortunate situation.

However, there is hope: medical science constantly adapts and innovations are able to continually improve how professionals treat outbreaks of drug resistant diseases. But before we can take advantage of medical innovations, we must understand where medicine lacks in accessibility and what is the impact of these innovations in alleviating the global disease burden. The Global Health Impact Project aims to reduce the complexities surrounding the diseases by providing convenient indexes showing where better access to medicine is needed. The collection of this data is done to encourage and support the development of these innovations for drug resistant diseases.

Researchers at Emory University have recently used a new mathematical model to determine where drug resistant malaria might arise (PLOS, 2018). Malaria can be transmitted by the Plasmodium falciparum bacteria, which in recent years has been becoming increasingly resistant to some medicines. The mathematical model used transmission dynamics data on humans and mosquitoes to demonstrate that areas at a lower risk for contracting the disease are at a higher risk of developing a drug-resistant strain. Once the new mutation evolves, it quickly travels to high transmission areas where it spreads like wildfire. Further understanding of how drug resistant bacteria spread is invaluable to tailoring responses to later outbreaks.

Another disease prone to drug resistance is tuberculosis, leading one strain to be named multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB). At the recent Guideline Development Group meeting of the World Health Organization (WHO), guidelines were updated to reflect the growing prevalence of MDR-TB – the WHO is now recommending several new oral treatments for tuberculosis (Gulland, 2018). While the new medications remain limited and will require further policy changes to be properly implemented, the stamp of approval from the WHO is a big step in the right direction to gaining access to better medications for all.

Recent advancements in science and medicine have helped to combat the growing issue of drug resistance, but there is still a long way to go. The first step to overcome this problem is by having easy access to the necessary data to comprehend the tremendous scale of the issue. Only with proper data can we truly capitalize on new innovations such as figuring out the impact of new medicines that cure MDR-TB. The data is becoming more accessible thanks to the Global Health Impact Project. The project creates indexes for both tuberculosis and malaria to evaluate the effectiveness of access of medicines. Using this data is essential for determining what types of innovations are needed, especially for addressing the complexity of drug resistant diseases. While drug resistant diseases will continue to plague our society, the evolving information and data will be the driving force for the creation of new innovations to address them.

References:

1. “Antibiotic / Antimicrobial Resistance.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 5 Mar. 2018.
2. “Hepatitis.” World Health Assembly, www.who.int/health-topics/hepatitis#tab_3. Accessed 15 Sept. 2020.
3. “Fact Sheet about Malaria.” World Health Organization, World Health Organization, June 2018.
4. Gulland, Anne. “Treatment Revolution for Patients with Multi-Drug Resistant TB.” The Telegraph, Telegraph Media Group, 20 Aug. 2018.
5. “Hepatitis E Questions and Answers for Health Professionals | CDC.” Center for Disease Control and Prevention, www.cdc.gov/hepatitis/hev/hevfaq.htm#d4. Accessed 15 Sept. 2020.
6. PLOS. "Lower-risk Malaria Regions are Breeding Grounds for Drug-Resistant Strains." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 21 August 2018.
7. “Treatment Guidelines for Rifampicin- and Multidrug-Resistant Tuberculosis, 2018 Update.” World Health Organization, World Health Organization, 15 June 2018.
8. “Tuberculosis (TB) Fact Sheet .” World Health Organization, World Health Organization, Feb. 2018.