What is it about?
Resistance of microbes to antibiotics and other antimicrobial drugs is a major problem for human and animal health globally. Rather than focusing on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) as a threat, we looked at susceptibility as a natural resource that is renewable only in some cases. This allowed us to combine techniques from resource economics and evolutionary ecology to build a mathematical model exploring the implications of this framing. In particular we explored how falling susceptibility (rising AMR) might affect prescribers' confidence in a drug and how this could influence patterns of susceptibility over time.
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Why is it important?
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a "silent pandemic" affecting humans, other animals, and the environment. However, viewing AMR as an enemy or a single disease takes away from the fact that it is a natural part of microbe evolution that needs to be managed rather than being possible to eliminate altogether. In this paper, we model susceptibility of microbes to antimicrobial drugs as a natural resource to be conserved and managed equitably. Not only does this allow us to bring in insights and methods from multiple different fields, it allows us to identify possible explanations for observed patterns of AMR over time, opening new avenues for investigation.
Perspectives
There are many ways to understand and model AMR, but viewing susceptibility as a quasi-renewable natural resource has had little attention since it was first proposed several decades ago. I hope that looking at antimicrobial drugs as tools that we use to access this critical resource will be an interesting and thought-provoking perspective for readers and that it will inspire further models to help us manage susceptibility equitably and responsibly for future generations.
Carys Redman-White
University of Edinburgh
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: A socio-ecological System Dynamics model of antimicrobial use and resistance, PLOS One, April 2026, PLOS,
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0347021.
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