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Saloni
@scientificdiscovery.dev

Many people talk about the "Golden Age of Antibiotics", but I hadn't seen it visualized properly. Just how many types of antibiotics were discovered during that time? So, I visualized it myself!

381 reposts1.1K likes

Daniel Saraga
@danielsaraga.eurosky.social

Cool, nice chart! I have made a similar one showing also commercialization and resistance. Interestingly, resistance was sometimes observed before market introduction. bsky.app/profile/dani...

Daniel Saraga@danielsaraga.eurosky.social

7️⃣ New drugs are getting rare: 90% of the major classes of antibiotics have been discovered before 1980, only 3 out of 29 after 1980. Pharma companies have little financial incitation to invest, as new compounds often have to be kept as “last resource” drugs. Still, new approaches exist. /end

Roby Bhattacharyya
@roby-b.bsky.social

I suspect this ("resistance observed before market introduction") is more common than we realize, mainly bc we don't test for resistance to a drug until it, well, exists / is used. The "antibiotic resistance is ancient" lit is pretty persuasive that resistance to most (all?) abx predates us humans.

MrG
@biomattrs.bsky.social

Check out Dr. Hazel Barton's amazing work on cave microbes. Resistance to penicillin and other antibiotics are found in cave populations that have been cutoff from the surface for >10,000 years. No matter what we find/cook up there's likely already a resistant bug somewhere in the deep ecology.

Lesley A Hall
@erinacean.bsky.social

It was also effective (at first) for gonorrhoea, replacing invasive and prolonged treatment. There was a short phase, post-pencillin, when it was believed that sexually-transmitted infections were 'these dying diseases'. The rise of resistant strains, among other things, proved this wrong.

Saloni
@scientificdiscovery.dev

The data comes from this very interesting paper on antibiotic development: doi.org/10.1016/j.mi... And is part of a new article I wrote on the Golden Age of Antibiotics and how we can spark a new one!

ourworldindata.orgWhat was the Golden Age of Antibiotics, and how can we spark a new one?Many antibiotics were developed during the “Golden Age of Antibiotics”. How did it happen, why has antibiotic development slowed down since then, and what can we do to reignite it?
Fed up & old
@oldhippie420.bsky.social

Since I have severe allergies to a whole lot of medicine, there are only 2 antibiotics I can take. It is vital that I stay as healthy as possible. I cannot afford to have one of the antibiotics become resistant to my body.

Saloni
@scientificdiscovery.dev

Here's another chart as well. Both are in the same article.

Saloni@scientificdiscovery.dev

You may have heard that it took a long time for penicillin to be scaled up. What about other antibiotics? How long did it take for them to be mass produced and introduced clinically, after they were discovered? I created a visualization of this here:

Colleen Fellows
@colleenfellows.bsky.social

Great graphic. The development of antibiotics changed the world. I was told many times about my grandparents devastation as my uncle died at 13 of spinal meningitis, just as penicillin became available. It wasn't available in southern Montana yet. They tried to have it delivered, but too late.

Saloni
@scientificdiscovery.dev

Thank you! Oh that's really sad to hear. It's a big interest of my work to try to find ways to speed up medical innovation & improve its quality, and real life stories of how it affects people are gut-wrenching. It's hard to imagine now living without treatments like it!