SUPERBUGS are leading Britain back into a "pre-antibiotic era", when simple infections wiped out entire populations, a report warned yesterday.
It said the battle against drug-resistant bacteria was being undermined by failing medicines and by policies that focus only on disease-control measures and restricting antibiotic use.
Instead, doctors want a commitment to research and developm
ent, leading to new diagnostic tools to catch infections early and better treatments.
However, pharmaceutical companies are reluctant to invest in improved therapies because they do not make as much money as other drugs, the report by the Royal Society said.
Sir David Read, its vice-president, said: "Much of the debate on superbugs has focused on cleaning hospitals. This is important, but it will not deal with the fact that MRSA and other infections are increasingly resistant to the medicines we have come to rely on to treat them.
"We must make sure that the investment is in place to deliver the next generation of antibiotics."
The report was based on an international symposium organised by the Royal Society to examine areas of research that could lead to new treatments.
It warned: "We are in danger of returning to a 'pre-antibiotic era', with bacterial diseases becoming more difficult and expensive to treat."
The incidence of resistance to antibiotics is increasing both in hospitals, where staff are constantly struggling against the spread of MRSA and Clostridium difficile, and in the community, with bacteria such as streptococcus pneumoniae, haemophilus influenzae and mycobacterium tuberculosis a growing problem. Many are now resistant to a number of different drugs.
The report said barriers to the development of new treatments included pharmaceutical firms' unwillingness to invest, because such drugs were undervalued and underpriced – so producing less profit.
It said: "The pharmaceutical sector is experiencing significant economic problems at the moment, so there are few new drugs currently in development that will impact on future sales, and hence profit."
Professor Richard Moxon, head of paediatrics at the University of Oxford, who was among delegates at the symposium, said doctors were becoming increasingly alarmed by the number of organisms resistant to drugs. He said: "In some cases, microbes, like TB, for example, are going to be resistant to all the treatments available and it is no longer going to be possible to treat patients with antibacterial drugs.
"Some forms of bacteria, such as the hospital-acquired ones, will be impossible to combat and that will mean a large number of fatalities if we do not invest in strategic innovations and develop new drugs.
"Market forces are at play here, because drugs companies like to invest in fighting chronic diseases such as diabetes and Alzheimer's. There is more profit in them, as patients take these over a long period of time.
"Antibacterials are a victim of their own success – they cure you pretty quickly – which means they are not seen as a very attractive proposition."
The report recommends a more realistic market valuation on antibacterials to reflect the fact they are life-saving drugs, and the creation of regulatory conditions to encourage venture capitalists, biotech companies and pharmaceutical companies to invest in them. It also urges the development of more efficient diagnostic tools, the identification of what treatments might be most effective and the continued development of traditional antibiotics.
It suggests the establishment of centres of excellence for antibacterial therapeutics.
BACKGROUNDSIR Alexander Fleming transformed medicine by discovering the world's first antibiotic, penicillin, in 1928.
Without it, many illnesses would still be incurable and life expectancy today would be lower.
But even he foresaw the problems that would arise once certain bacteria developed an immunity to it.
The Ayrshire-born biologist and pharmacologist started his career at St Mary's Hospital in London, where he was made professor of bacteriology in 1928.
One day, the notoriously untidy Fleming left a petri dish smeared with staphylococcus lying out in his laboratory and went off on holiday.
When he returned, he discovered the plate had been contaminated with mould and that the germ was absent from the area around the spreading fungus.
He preserved the mouldy dish, realising that the inhibiting power of the fungus had shown its potential as the basis of a new drug.
Fleming continued his investigations but found that cultivating penicillin was quite difficult and that, after having grown the mould, it was even more difficult to isolate the antibiotic agent.
His impression was that because of the problem of producing it in quantity, and because its action appeared to be rather slow, penicillin would not be important in treating infection.
He also became convinced that penicillin would not last long enough in the human body to kill bacteria effectively.
