Your questions answered: Are there alternatives to antibiotics?

Readers asked us a host of questions about antibiotics amid rising rates of antimicrobial resistance and a lack of investment in new drugs to fight bacterial infections. We have some answers. Antibiotics transformed modern medicine and helped double the average human lifespan in the last century. But bacteria evolve to outsmart drugs designed to kill them. Dangerous infections that no longer respond to antibiotics are spreading quickly around the world, by as much as 15% a year, according to a report by the World Health Organization (WHO) published in October. In 2023, one in six bacterial infections was already resistant to antibiotic treatments. What can we do about it? We received many questions from you about antibiotics in response to an article we wrote about the urgent need for new drugs to fight bacterial infections. A key theme emerged around whether there are potential alternatives to antibiotics. We investigated three reader questions. Q1: How effective are natural ...