Antibiotic Dependence and how vaccines help, vaccines are a prophylactic treatment, meaning they must be administered before a viral or bacterial infection. The first vaccine was administered in 1796 by Edward Jenner who injected a young farm boy with cowpox to confer immunity to a more deadly virus which causes smallpox. Vaccines come in many different forms and types, but all will ultimately trigger an immune response to a pathogen (a disease-causing virus or microorganism). The body produces memory cells in response to the foreign threat. These cells can recognise the infection if it occurs again and can rapidly respond to the pathogen either preventing symptoms entirely or greatly reducing the severity of the infection.
The world is dependent on antibiotics as these medicines are used to treat various bacterial infections. Some serious infections, such as pneumonia and sepsis, can only be treated effectively with antibiotics. As these conditions, as well as many less serious infections, are treated with antibiotics, there becomes an antibiotic dependency. The more antibiotics that are used, the faster that antibiotic resistance develops. The first antibiotic discovered was penicillin in 1943. Resistance to penicillin was identified in 1948. Even if the pervasive issue of improper antibiotic usage is solved worldwide, there remains a group of conditions which must be treated with antibiotics. Therefore, antibiotic resistance will always be a side effect of their use.
There are several well-known methods used to decrease the rate at which resistance develops. These include education on the proper use of antibiotics, such as preventing antibiotics being prescribed for viral infections as well as ensuring that the correct dosage and length of treatment are prescribed to patients. Correct sanitation and hygiene also help to decrease antibiotic resistance developing. Similarly, although not as strongly communicated to the public, vaccination is an incredibly effective way to reduce antibiotic resistance by reducing the number of bacterial infections in a population. There are various vaccines which offer immunity to various bacterial infections, such as cholera, bacterial meningitis and typhoid vaccines. If a high enough percentage of a population is vaccinated, then this can in turn prevent unvaccinated individuals from acquiring an infection. This mechanism is known as herd immunity, and the percentage threshold of a population requiring vaccination to achieve such immunity depends on the vaccine and the pathogen.
By encouraging vaccination, especially against bacterial infections, there is the possibility to further reduce our antibiotic dependence. This is turn reduces the amount of antibiotics that are prescribed, which reduces the rate at which antibiotic resistance develops. Reducing usage of antibiotic has also been shown to decrease the frequency of resistance in a bacterial population. Studies have been conducted that show a reduction in resistance during summer months when there can be reduced numbers of infections compared to winter months. It has been proposed that antibiotic resistance is costly to bacterial fitness. This means that antibiotic resistance mechanisms can use lots of resources and energy, and so are only worthwhile for bacteria in the presence of antibiotics. The model suggests that if antibiotic use is decreased, then natural selection will lead to antibiotic-sensitive strains becoming more common.
Encouraging uptake of present bacterial vaccines and the development of more vaccines for bacterial infections could help to decrease our dependency on antibiotics, and help to control the sustainability of antibiotics in the future.
For further information please refer to the articles linked below:
The role of vaccines in fighting antimicrobial resistance (AMR)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6183139/
It’s Time for a Change in Practice: Reducing Antibiotic Use Can Alter Antibiotic Resistance
https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/197/8/1082/901577?login=false