Rising antibiotic resistance seems to be linked with global warming

Until now health researchers have hypothesized that antibiotic resistance was primarily the result of antibiotics’ overprescribe and overuse. Multidisciplinary team of epidemiologists from Boston Children’s Hospital and the University of Toronto have found that higher local temperatures and population densities correlate with higher antibiotic resistance in common bacterial strains. The researchers believe that global warming accelerates the transfer of antibiotic-resistant organisms from host to host, providing more opportunities for living organisms to choose for resistance as they develop and reproduce. As a result of findings, current estimates of deaths due to AMR could be hugely underestimated and the future prospects could be significantly worse than previously thought, resulting in urgent need to invest more research efforts to improve understanding of the interconnectedness of infectious disease, medicine and changing environment.

Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0161-6

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