A Timeline of Antibiotic Resistance

See timeline above

Golden Era of Development

Introduction of antibiotic agents with penicillin in the 1940s produced a breakthrough health intervention, saving millions of lives1

The ‘golden era’ of antibiotic discovery in the 1940s-1960s1 Streptomycin, tetracycline, vancomycin developed among

many others Commercial development of a huge number of drug classes1

Global effort to find new antibiotics through screening of microbes1

Many bacterial diseases receded1

Emergence of ResistanceA parallel surge in strains of antibiotic resistant

bacteria appeared only years after development of the antibiotic2

As early as the 1940s isolates of Staphylococcus aureus resistant to penicillin were identified2

Although antibiotic agent discovery continued, resistance has began to increase sharply2

Loss of effectiveness becoming common for all antibiotics after continued use1

Number of resistance causing enzymes identified3

Increasing Development Gaps and Growing

ResistanceSince the 1960s, development of antibiotics has been

declining4

Larger gaps between development of new antibiotics4

Only one new antibiotic agent in the last decadeDevelopment becoming more expensive for drug

companies4

Many of the most effective antibacterials have now been rendered ineffective – with many multidrug resistant strains arising2

Leaves an uncertain future concerning bacterial diseases

References1. Walsh C. Where will new antibiotics come from? Nature Reviews

Microbiology. 2003;1(1):65-70.2. Laxminarayan R, Duse A, Wattal C, Zaidi AK, Wertheim HF, Sumpradit N, et

al. Antibiotic resistance—the need for global solutions. The Lancet infectious diseases. 2013;13(12):1057-1098.

3. Davies J, Davies D. Origins and evolution of antibiotic resistance. Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews. 2010;74(3):417-433. Figure 2 , Numbers of unique β-lactamase enzymes identified since the introduction of the first β-lactam antibiotics; p. 421.

4. Cars O, Högberg LD, Murray M, Nordberg O, Sivaraman S, Lundborg CS, et al. Meeting the challenge of antibiotic resistance. Bmj. 2008;337(sep18_3):a1438-a1438.

Timeline produced by Centre of Disease Control and Prevention USA, found at: https://thefern.org/2013/11/imagining-the-post-antibiotics-future/timeline-of-ant

ibiotic-resistance/