Peer into Post-Apocalyptic Future of Antimicrobial Resistance

ABOUT 4 MILLION years ago, a cave was forming in the Delaware Basin of what is now Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico. From that time on, Lechuguilla Cave remained untouched by humans or animals until its discovery in 1986—an isolated, pristine primeval ecosystem.

When the bacteria found on the walls of Lechuguilla were analyzed, many of the microbes were determined not only to have resistance to natural antibiotics like penicillin, but also to synthetic antibiotics that did not exist on earth until the second half of the twentieth century. As infectious disease specialist Brad Spellberg put it in the New England Journal of Medicine, “These results underscore a critical reality: antibiotic resistance already exists, widely disseminated in nature, to drugs we have not yet invented.”

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https://www.wired.com/2017/03/peer-post-apocalyptic-future-antimicrobial-resistance/?mbid=nl_31817_p2&CNDID=31755630

One thought on “Peer into Post-Apocalyptic Future of Antimicrobial Resistance”

  1. Many thanks for sharing knowledge!!!! Good article…… ‘Evolution continues to happen whether human or antimicrobial… Most worrisome part is that we don’t respect nature which is capable of creating enough antibodies to protect us from such unforeseen risks…’

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