Call for action over resistance to antibiotics

Increased resistance to existing antibiotics combined with a demise in the search for new ones is creating the “unthinkable scenario” of life without the medicines, it is claimed.

The major drugs companies, which have shied away from antibiotic research for a number of reasons, including profit, must play their part to change the situation urgently, argues Professor Laura Piddock in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases.