Antibiotic resistance makes once-lifesaving drugs useless. Could we reverse it?

The world is facing an ever-increasing threat from bacteria evolving resistance to known antibiotics, rendering the essential drugs ineffective. But now, researchers are exploring promising new treatment strategies, with the aim of making those resistant bacteria susceptible to drugs once more.

The rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria has been dubbed the "silent pandemic" due to its stealthy global spread and lack of urgent public attention, in comparison to other pandemics such as COVID-19, especially in regions where antibiotic use remains largely unchecked. Estimates from a 2019 report published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggest that resistant bacteria killed at least 1.27 million people worldwide that year, with 35,000 of those deaths occurring in the U.S. alone. That marked a 52% increase in U.S. deaths from resistant microbes since the CDC's previous report in 2013.

"Antibiotic resistance is a major public Health threat because so much of modern medical care depends on antibiotics — childbirth, cancer treatment, transplants, operations, and infections," Zamin Iqbal, a professor of algorithmic and microbial genomics at the University of Bath in the U.K., told Live Science in an email.

What's causing this mounting disaster? The overuse and misuse of antibiotics in both medicine and agriculture are the major culprits.

Related: Superbugs are on the rise. How can we prevent antibiotics from becoming obsolete?

That's because antibiotic resistance arises from a natural evolutionary process — one in which the fittest bacteria with the right tools to outcompete an antibiotic survive to pass on those tools.

When a population of bacteria is exposed to an antibiotic, any genetic mutations that allow the bacteria to survive the drug will quickly spread between bacterial cells. Repeatedly using different antibiotics can lead bacteria to develop resistance to multiple drugs, resulting in strains that are no longer treatable with any known antibiotics — with potentially fatal consequences.