Credit: Wladimir Bulgar/Science Photo Library/Getty Images
Dear Dana,
I very much enjoyed your article regarding the use of antibiotics, particularly for UTIs. Not enough effort of medicine, in my opinion, is focused on women’s health. As you mentioned in your article, antibiotic resistance is a major problem and goes far beyond UTIs.
You mentioned that some doctors are concerned that they may run out of options. When you say “doctors”, it sounds as though you are referring to physicians. It is not just physicians who are concerned. A large portion (I am not saying this is a majority either) of the public is aware of this issue and is very concerned. Scientists/engineers, others with doctoral degrees and master’s degrees care very much about this issue and are working to wih the hope of ensuring that there are solutions to these problems.
The quote about “Antibiotic resistance-not just [for UTIs] but all kinds of antibiotic resistance-is a huge problem, and no one’s really doing anything about it” is simply not true.
The Gates Foundation and the UK committed to $52 million dollars in 2018. The Gate’s foundation also helped support this fantastic research: Link. NIAID of the NIH also supports a great deal of research for inhibiting multi-drug resistant strains of bacteria. There are over 8000 articles in PubMed alone which refer to antibiotic resistance. Specific articles which may be of interest to readers include:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30115335/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pathogens/antimicrobial-resistance/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27227291/