Team:TU Eindhoven
Since the discovery of the first antibiotic penicillin by Alexander Fleming in 1928, many antibiotics have been developed, enabling us to effectively treat a wide variety of bacterial infections. A hundred years ago, a bacterial infection could mean a death sentence but now antibiotics often provide the answer. But what if the antibiotics we now have do not work anymore? The discovery of new antibiotics lags behind the continuing increase in antimicrobial resistance (AMR), which means that we will soon be out of answers for bacterial infections.
with solutions
It is time to stop the process of AMR development which is heavily accelerated by the misuse of antibiotics. Antibiotics are now misused in a preventive manner (mainly with cattle), misused to treat non-bacterial-related ailments and misused by unspecific treatment of bacterial infections. With our fast and specific diagnostic method for bacterial infections, this misuse will become a problem of the past. Our method can be used as an easy-to-use point-of-care test to diagnose bacterial infections and implementation will make sure that we will win the fight against AMR.
References
- Review on Antimicrobial Resistance. Antimicrobial resistance: Tackling a crisis for the health and wealth of nations. 2014
